


Apollo

by lonelyWhale52



Series: Apollo Extended Universe [1]
Category: Lost
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, I guess it's gonna be slow burn?, LOST Seasons 1 - 6, Slow Burn, Time Travel, im not good at adding tags, oc is confused, the island is a mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:21:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28711158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyWhale52/pseuds/lonelyWhale52
Summary: Wanting to do something spontaneous in her life, Roxanne Weiss decided to board Oceanic Flight 815 at the last minute, to spend a long weekend in LA. The plane crashed and Roxy found herself being stranded on a mysterious island together with the rest of the survivors of her flight. After meeting Benjamin Linus, she can't help her desire to find out more about the mysterious man. Can she allow herself to trust him?Discovering some of the island’s secrets, Roxy starts to wonder for which reason she was brought to the island.
Relationships: Alex Rousseau & Original Female Character(s), Benjamin Linus & Alex Rousseau, Benjamin Linus/Original Female Character(s), Hugo Reyes & Original Female Characters, Walt Lloyd & Original Female Character(s), original female character(s) & Everyone
Series: Apollo Extended Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2104680
Comments: 29
Kudos: 21





	1. 23092004

**Author's Note:**

> Hello to everyone who stumbled across this little fanfiction I decided to write. It's been a while - quite a few years actually - since I last wrote something, so I'm a little rusty. Nevertheless I'm sure I'll get the hand of it again. I hope you like this, please don't hesitate to leave a comment, even a simple "Nice" or a "Good" would make me happy. Or even a rating like "x/10", haha.  
> English isn't my first language so I apologise for any mistakes.  
> I obviously do not own Lost or any of the characters besides my own OC.  
> Thank you for giving this work a try!  
> -B.

23/09/2004

Somewhere on a mysterious island a woman was lying in the jungle near the beach. She was unconscious but otherwise uninjured. She wore a dark blue zip hoodie - it was dirty from the crash, covered with sand and mud - and jeans. Her hair was dark and short, it reached beneath her eyes.

Her name was Roxanne Weiss. She had been one of the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815, travelling from Sydney to Los Angeles…Well, that had been the plan, before everything went wrong. The last thing she remembered before she starting to get dizzy from the sudden loss of altitude was the tail section breaking off. And then, well, then everything turned black...

…

When Roxy woke up, the first thing she realized was that she has lost her glasses. Only as she sat up to look around for it and found herself with hands full of sand and grass, did she notice she wasn’t on the plane anymore. It took her a few more moments to notice that the loud noises she first labeled as typical background noise, weren’t typical at all. Quite the opposite actually. What she was hearing were screams. Only then did it actually hit her:

The plane must have crashed.

Dragging herself to her feet, she looked around aimlessly, trying to find the way to the crash site. Her poor vision didn’t help at all as she struggled her way through the jungle, trying to find anyone else from the plane. Her only guide were the muted screams, as she rushed between the trees.

The lack of her glasses should have made her run slower, but her dizziness made her unable to think straight. She stumbled on something metallic and cursed as she landed face first on the groud. Wiping the sand off of her face, she moved to stand again, finally finding her way to the beach.

It was a chaos. Plane parts everywhere. The sun blinded her as it reflected off a piece of the plane and she flinched as she kicked into something hard while running towards the center of the happenings.

People were running around, screaming for their loved ones and for help. The moving ones seemed to be uninjured, but she knew not everyone was as lucky as them. She held back the urge to throw up as she dodged a cut off arm lying in a puddle of blood by her feet, thanking the universe for her poor vision, for not being able to see the dead clearly.

„Help! Please, I’m stuck!”

She would’ve nearly missed it, had the voice not been so different from every other screaming person at the crash site. It was much higher. It belonged to a child.

She froze, looking around in panic. “Where are you?” She shouted back, trying to make something out between the blurry images her eyes showed her.

“Please help, I’m here!” It came from somewhere behind her. It was a boy’s voice.

Her head whipped around, her feet carrying her automatically towards the source of the cry. She squeezed her eyes together, trying to find him, but she wasn’t able to make out anything between the blurriness. The colors of the sand and the demadged plane parts were mixing together like oil paint on an artist’s palette while the waves of the ocean moved in the background.

Wait, the ocean.

“Please, I’m here! I’m stuck in my seat, please! Help!”

And then she saw him. Well, not really, but she saw something in motion, that – as she started rushing towards it – turned out to be the child. It was his waiving arms that she had noticed. He was lying in the water.

“Don’t worry, I’m here, I’m coming!” She shouted, now relieved that she had found him.

She took off running towards the water. And then finally, she reached him. He was still in his seat from the plane, which was lying on it’s back in the water. The child’s body was nearly fully emerged in the water, only his limbs were still above surface. The poor child was barely able to hold his head out of the water and keep himself from drowning.

“Please - My seatbelt! I can’t open it!”

She fell to her knees in the water, and reached around for his seatbelt. It was dented, stopping him from opening it. Her hands started tugging at his seatbelt, but it wouldn’t budge.

Roxy droppedher hands into the water and felt around for stones, a plan already forming in her mind. The only way she’ll be able to get him out of there is by cutting it.

“What’s your name?” She asked, putting her hands on the young boy’s shoulders, holding his head for him.

“Walt. My name is Walt. Please, I can’t-“

“Walt, I promise, I’ll get you out of here.” She tried to calm him down, hoping he couldn’t hear how frightened she was. “I need to find something to cut the seatbelt with. Will you hang on for me, Walt?”

“No, don’t leave, please-“ He pleaded, his big brown eyes wide open in terror.

“I need to find something sharp enough” She started, her head turning towards the beach. “I’ll be back, Walt, I promise” She faked a smile, hoping it would reassure him. His big brown eyes pierced into hers for a moment, as he tried to talk himself into believing her, into trusting her. Eventually, he nodded.  
“Okay, but please be quick.”

She nodded. “I’ll get you out of here, Walt”

Then she took off towards the beach, leaving the poor boy alone. She ran as fast as she could in the water, but the short distance between Walt and the beach seemed to be miles long.

She immediately fell to all fours as she reached the sand, grabbing at anything metallic she saw, hoping to find something sharp enough to cut the boy free. Her drenched clothes were uncomfortably sticking to her body and the sand clung to them as if she was covered with glue.  
Her hands grabbed and grabbed and she searched and searched until what felt like hours, she came in contact with something that definitely had not been part of the plane. It was a hand. Connected to a torso. Belonging to a man with a piece of shrapnel buried deep in his chest. His shirt was covered with dark red blood and his blue eyes were opened lifelessly. He was certainly dead.

She flinched away from the corpse, but her eyes fell on the piece of metal stuck into the poor man’s chest. Her stomach protested as she lunged at the piece, and wrapped her hands around the bloody object to remove it from the man’s chest. She pulled it out, gagged at the sound it made, and quickly looked away from the now gaping wound.

The shrapnel was about the length of her forearm, but it was flat. It’s sharp were covered with half dried blood. She didn’t know for sure what the bloody object used to be before it became a deadly weapon, but to be frank, she didn’t really care. It was sharp, that’s the only thing that mattered. Rushing back into the water towards Walt, she didn’t even notice she had cut her hands on the metallic thing as she held onto it as if her life depended on it.  
Well, actually, a life did depend on it.

“Walt, I’m coming!” She shouted, her heart beating like crazy while she dashed across the water. She nearly slipped on a flat and slippery rock but was able to compose herself before she fell.

Her wet pants were slowing her down, the thick material of her jeans pulled uncomfortably at her. Her ruined shoes felt disgusting and the sand that’s gotten into them scratched her feet. But that was a problem for later. All Roxy could focus on that moment was freeing the poor boy.

She reached him slower than she’d liked and her heart dropped into her pants as he didn’t react to her presence at all. Had she been too slow? Had she arrived too late?

“Walt?!” She cried as she arrived by his side. She nearly dropped the makeshift knife as she saw his head underwater.

No

She showed the shrapnel between the seatbelt and the seat as fast as she could, making sure she didn’t cut him by accident and started working on the seatbelt. With her other hand she reached for his neck, raising it above the water.

The seatbelt snapped. She dropped the now useless plane wreckage and heaved him out of the seat into her arms. He was surprisingly light. Draping him over her shoulder with his head hanging down, she ran back towards the shore, hoping she hadn’t been too late. She wasn’t religious, never has been, but at that moment she prayed towards anyone who was willing to listen.

And then he coughed. And coughed again.

Roxy’s eyes filled with tears with the relief that sound brought her.

Arriving at the shore, she lowered him as gently as she was able to and supported his back as he continued coughing up water.

“There you go”

Her eyes fell on his left forearm as he sat up properly. A big cut ran across his forearm, now bleeding.

She winced, thinking about how that must sting from the salty ocean water and the sand. Poor boy.

“You alright?” She asked as he stopped coughing. Looking down at his small face. He gave her a small smile before collapsing back into the sand. He must be exhausted.

“Thank you” His voice sounded a bit hoarse, probably from all the shouting and the coughing.

“Don’t mention it, kiddo” She collapsed next to him, looking up at the blue sky. It was cloudless and for a moment she could pretend that everything was fine and her glasses weren’t missing and that her plane hadn’t crashed and that she had not been nearly the reason for a child’s death.  
But her being the prober adult that she was, she knew she couldn’t just pretend everything was fine.

She sat up and shrugged off her zip hoodie. “Who did you travel with?” She asked as she tied her drenched hoodie around her waist. Flinching from the pain she felt on her palms during that action, she looked at them and noticed multiple cuts on per palms. Ouch. They must have happened while she was carrying the shrapnel. Turning her head and inspecting herself for more injuries, her eyes fell on a cut on her left forearm similar to Walt’s. She wondered where she got that from.  
“My dad” Answered Walt, now also sitting up. He looked around.

“Come on, let’s find him” Standing up, she reached out a hand to help him stand up. Her wounded palm protested and the wounds stung but walt seemed pretty exhausted.

“What’s your name?” Asked Walt as they started walking towards the others. The beach was full of plane wreckage, but the bigger parts seemed to be further down the beach. She couldn’t make out much, but there seemed to be moving people.

“Hey Walt, can you do me a favor?” She asked as the young boy leaned against her, clearly exhausted from everything that happened. He looked even younger than he probably was in his oversized drenched shirt. Roxy never had any children or siblings but she was overcome by a sudden urge to protect him.  
“Yeah, sure” He frowned up at her.

“Please tell me if you see any glasses lying around. I lost mine and to be frank, I can’t really see anything” She chuckled. The whole situation was absurd. She had survived a plane crash and her biggest problem was her missing glasses.

“Okay” He looked up at her again. “How much can’t you see? How many fingers am I holding up?” He asked, holding up two fingers,  
Roxy chuckled as she answered.

“And now?” He grinned, holding up four.

“I’m not blind Walt. I can see something. The problem is that everything is blurry”

“Well, I’ll be your eyes then! I’ll help you find your glasses.”

“Thanks Walt”

“Hey, what’s your name? And why do you have an accent?” He asked in a typical childish manner.

“My name is Roxanne. But you can call me Roxy. And I have an accent because I’m from Germany.”

“Woah really? Can you speak German?” He questioned, his brown eyes twice their normal size in curiosity. She chuckled as she affirmed him of the fact that she was able to speak German.

“Say something in German” He requested.

“Was denn?”

“What?” He frowned in confusion.

“Exactly” She giggled, enjoying his confusion too much.

They continued their small talk as they made their way to the center of the crash site. Apparently, Walt was 10 years old and was travelling with his dad and his dog Vincent. Roxy had a soft spot for animals - especially for dogs – her whole life, the mere imagination of Walt’s dog having gotten injured during the plane crash nearly brought tears to her eyes. Judging by his silence after telling her about Vincent, Walt had similar thoughts.

The screams of the rest of the survivors kept becoming louder and louder as they neared them. People were running around, shouting for help and for their missing family members or friends. A dark-haired man seemed to run from person to person, asking everyone whether or not they had a pen.

“Poor dude.” Roxy thought. “Must have hit his head pretty hard.”

And that was the moment Walt decided that running away would be a very good idea. He took off and before Roxy even registered what she was doing, she was following him. Running around without her glasses on a beach full of plane debris wasn’t the best decision she’d ever made but then again, the whole situation she was currently in is crazy.

Unfortunately, she lost sight of him quite quickly, her vison preventing her from following him to make sure he’s alright. A strange and unexpected urge to find Walt filled her. What if he gets injured? Or even worse? She felt oddly responsible for Walt, even though she barely knew him. Technically, he was just a stranger to her.  
Roxy stumbled as she caught her foot on something and cursed as she braced herself for the unwelcome meeting with the ground again. She really should stop running around without seeing anything.

But somehow, the fall never came. Someone had caught her.

“Hey, are you alright?”. Roxy squinted up at her “savior”. He was tall, a mop of shaggy brown hair crowned his head. He seemed to be sweaty, nearly as out of breath as her. His clothes vere dirty and even torn in some places. Had he been running too?

“Are you looking for something?” he inquired, as she answered his previous question with a nod.

“A kid. I was helping him find his dad. But he just ran off out of nowhere”, she explained, looking around anxiously. Where was he? Did he see his dad somewhere?  
He frowned as he looked around. He appeared to see something, Roxy noticed, as his frowned deepened and he glanced back at her.

“Do you mean him?” He asked, as if it were obvious. With his arm, he gestured towards something, or well, someone, in the distance. She squinted again, but to no avail. Without her glasses, it was just a blurry dark blob.

“Are you sure you’re alright? You could have a concussion” He worried. Huh. Is she really that blind?

She squinted again in the direction he had gestured, but nope, everything was as blurry as before.

“Eh, I can’t really see anything.” She admitted. “I kinda lost my glasses?” Saying that out loud felt somehow ridiculous, even though she knew they had bigger problems at hand.

A sudden anxiety filled her. What if she won’t find her glasses at all? She was pretty close to being useless without them, but she was uninjured and could assist those who need help.

“Oh, that’s unfortunate” He paused. “Do you need help? I can help you look for it?” He offered. He was close enough so Roxy could see the sincerity in his eyes.  
She thanked him but declined his offer. It would be a waste of time to look for it right now.

There could be passengers who are badly injured and need the help mpre than she did.

"Well, the offer still stands if you'd like to look for it later" He replied, the corners of his mouth lifting as he offered her a little encouraging smile. "I'm Ethan" He offered his hand for a shake.

Roxy took it and introduced herself.

"ROXY LOOK"

Both of them turned towards the source of the exclamation. It was Walt, pulling a man behind him towards her. It must be his father.  
He did reassemble Walt a lot, Roxy noticed as they approached. And even though she couldn't see him clearly yet, Roxy knew how relieved he must be to have found his son.

The corners of her mouth turned upwards as she grinned at the still drenched boy. It felt like a huge weight has been lifted off her shoulders. Huh.

Ethan excused himself before the little family arrived at her side, suddenly very eager to go somewhere. Weird.

Roxy wiped her wet hair out of her eyes Walts father thanked her for making sure his son was alright.

She flushed and shrugged it off. What else was she supposed to do? Let him drown?

"Do you still need help to find your glasses?" Wondered Walt.

"No, thank you" She smiled. "I'll look for them later" It was somehow tempting to go and look for them but as the adrenalin started wearing off, she became aware of the fact how exhausted she was. Her wet clothes clung at her body in a very uncomfortable way, her wet and sandy shoes felt disgusting and the cuts on her hands and forearm stung. She needs ro do something about those.

Wait, talking about cuts…

"You should get some help for the cut on your forearm, Walt" she advised, looking at both the addressed boy and his dad.

Both of them frowned. The younger out of confusion, the older one out of worry.

"You are hurt?! Why didn't you say anything? You told me, you were fine!" Exclaimed Walt's dad worriedly. He grabbed Walt by his shoulders and turned him back and forth, in search of any sign of an injury. Walt’s father reached for his son’s arms but Walt, clearly uncomfortable being inspected, shrugged him off.

"I'm not injured!" Walt protested, clearly confused. He raised both arms to prove his point. And he was right. There was no sign of any injuries, both of his forearms were blank, his skin even. Only some dried sand decorated his arms.

Roxy frowned. That can't be right. She knew what she had seen before. But somehow, the previously seen injury seemed to have … disappeared?

Her frown deepened as she glanced back down towards her own forearm. Her own injuries were still there, the cuts on her hands and forearm stung every time the skin stretched as she moved her fingers. The long cut stretched across her left forearm was still bleeding, it appeared to have bled enough for it to run down her arm towards her hand, leaving trails of dried blood on her forearm.

"Maybe I did hit my head" she wondered, as she inspected her bleeding arm.


	2. The calm after the storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, once again!  
> Hope you like this chapter, pls leave a comment what you thought about it.  
> I already finished writing chapters 3 and 4, but I'd like to have a few more chapters done before posting more than one chapter a week. I'll update every tuesday, tho!  
> -B.

The sun dropped below the horizon, coloring the sky a very deep purple-red-ish color. Roxy stared out at the sea, watching the rhythmic movements of the waves, as she fidgeted with the bandages around her hands. The initial shock from the crash has worn off hours ago; it has been replaced by a unnerving emptiness. She felt nothing as she stared out at the ocean.

Everything was too silent, too calm. The passengers – the survivors – have set up camps to prepare for the night and sat around small fires in small groups, trying to make the best out of the situation. All together they couldn’t have been more than, what, 50 survivors?

Roxy shuddered, not believing her luck.

She watched as the lights – the campfires, the last rays of sunshine reflected by the ocean and the occasional flashlights some passengers have found – danced around in the darkness in forms of blurry orange orbs. Her glasses were still lost, probably lying around somewhere in the jungle or being at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. The mere thought of the sand scratching away at the glasses made her cringe.

She sighed, letting out a long breath, trying to release her problems that way. It didn’t help of course, but even pretending for a second felt nice.

It was somehow beautiful, she supposed. Had she not been a part of such a catastrophic event - had this night been a regular night at a normal beach after a normal day - she would have itched to paint it.

She pulled the blanked she had found closer to her body as the silence made her shudder again. Or was it the cold? Roxy wouldn’t have been able to tell. The sand beneath her was cold, and the setting sun has taken it’s radiating warmth with it, but somehow Roxy couldn’t feel the cold. Or she just didn’t realize it.  
Her eyes moved to her naked feet. Her soiled shoes and socks were discarded on the sand next to her. She’d taken them off a while ago. Her clothes had dried a long time ago, but the sand that kept getting in her shoes had bothered her.

How long she’s been sitting there, she didn’t know, but it could’ve been hours. She shook her head in disbelief.

Her eyes moved on from the evermoving ocean, looking around the camp. She should probably make a fire too. But how? She’d never learnt how to.

Letting out a long breath, she stood up and stretched. Her blanket nearly slipped off her shoulder, but she managed to catch it before it fell off. Time to make some friends.

With her shoes in her hand, she let her feet carry the rest of her body towards the nearest camp. People always imagined walking along the beach at night was something romantic. She had probably been one of those people once. But all she felt at that moment – as she walked towards the other survivors – was pain. Not even physical pain, no, her hands barely ached anymore, but more of an emotional pain. She just wanted to cry.

The nearest survivor was a woman. She seemed to be sitting in a disembodied business class chair; her blonde hair glowed golden in the firelight, resting her hands on her round belly – an indicator for her pregnancy.

“May I sit?” Roxy asked gently, not wanting to scare the woman in case she hasn’t heard her approaching.

The woman glanced at her with big eyes. “Sure”, she answered, the corners of her mouth lifting a little as she gave Roxy a small smile. With her hand, she gestured towards the empty seat next to her.

Roxy offered the woman her own little smile as a thank you as she sat down.

“I’m Roxy”, she started as a way to break the ice.

The woman glanced at her with friendly eyes.

“My name’s Claire”, she offered with a small lopsided smile.

“I’d say it’s nice to meet you but- “, Roxy trailed off, letting her hands speak for themselves as she gestured towards the fuselage. The woman next to her – Claire – chuckled.

“What happened to your hands?”, asked Claire after a few moments of silence.

Roxy glanced down at her bandaged hands. A man had approached her a while ago, asking her if she was alright, if she was injured. He was tall and a bit older than her, sporting short cropped dark hair. He had introduced himself as a surgeon and had offered to look at her hands after she showed them. From a small first aid kit that he had been carrying, he’d pulled some bandages and had wrapped some around her hands after cleaning the cuts. Her forearm had needed stiches. Roxy had started to protest, surely it wouldn’t be necessary. The man had persisted, pointing out how bad it would be for her if her wound would get infected. Which of course, was a very reasonable argument. So she had extended her arm and let him stich her up, let him sew her forearm together and tried her best to blink away the tears that had appeared in her eyes from the pain. She had counted 16 stiches all together. The man had bandaged it up for her after he finished and told her to look for him if she needed any more help. She had thanked him and then watched his back as he walked away towards the other survivors, asking around if anybody needed help.

“I cut myself on a piece of the wreckage” Roxy answered. “A doctor stitched me up. Literally” She added, waving around her bandaged left arm. Claire winced in sympathy.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah” Roxy glanced back at her. Wondering if she should dare to ask…

“How’s your …” Roxy begun, trailing off. With a little nod towards her heavy pregnant belly, she hoped Clair knew what she wanted to ask. Claire had a kind face and she appeared to be friendly. But Roxy didn’t want to make her upset in case…

“I’m not sure to be honest” She answered, her hands moving towards her belly once again.

“I’m sure everything will be fine” Roxy offered, though she herself was able to hear how empty her words had sounded. She wanted them to be reassuring, but the words just made her feel worse.

By the little encouraging smile Claire offered her in response, it was easy to tell that she felt just like Roxy did, even though she appreciated the remark.

“Yeah”

“Hungry?”

Little startled by the sudden interruption, Roxy ‘s head towards the source of the new voice. A big man with long dark curly hair had approached them, carrying what looked like two dozen frozen airplane meals. In spite of not having much appetite at that moment, Roxy knew it would be a while until she’d be able to eat a proper meal again, so she took the offered meals with a kind “Thank you” and a smile and passed one to Claire.

“Yeah. Thank you”, added Claire sweetly as she took it.

Hurley waved it off. With a nod of his head, he addressed the pregnant woman: “Any more, eh … you know, baby stuff?”

“No, no, I’m alright” Claire answered, as she shook her head.

Hurley, on the other hand, nodded, being glad she was alright, and reached into his pocked. His hand came up with silverware, which he offered the two women.

“Hang in there, dudes.”

“Yeah, you too” Claire responded as the man stared to walk away.

“Thanks for the food!”, added Roxy, appreciating his kindness.

The man nodded confidently and walked off towards the other survivors, distributing the food he was carrying”

“God, I’m starving”, Claire exclaimed as she opened the food container.

Roxy followed suit. Taking of the lid – which turned out to be a bit difficult, as she had tried to do so without getting her bandages dirty – she found herself staring at what looked like …lasagna? She couldn’t help but express her joy with a little chuckle. Of course, it would be lasagna.

Claire didn’t seem to have noticed Roxy’s little sound of joy as she gave the lasagna her undivided attention. By the way she was practically devouring her food, she must have been extremely hungry. Which – of course – wasn’t very surprising, given the fact that she was heavily pregnant.

Roxy dug into her own thawed out meal at a slower pace. It was cold, but better than nothing.

As she made her way through the lasagna, Roxy couldn’t help but think about her Aunt, wondering if she had received the news yet. She must have been notified; the crash had happened hours ago after all.

Showing another spoonful of lasagna into her mouth, Roxy blank away the sudden wetness in her eyes. Her poor Aunt must think she’s dead.

“You okay?”

Roxy looked up from her meal. Claire had stopped eating and was watching Roxy with a frown.

No. “Yeah”

“You are crying”, Claire pointed out sympathetically.

Roxy’s hand flew to her face, wiping away the tears. Huh. She hadn’t noticed.

“It’s gonna be alright” Claire reached over and took Roxy’s right hand and – mindful of her injuries – gave it a light but assuring squeeze. Roxy replied with one of her own.

“Thanks”

The Australian gave her hand another squeeze before letting it go and resuming with her previous task.

The women ate side by side, enjoying each other’s company in silence until a sudden loud sound disrupted the calm night.

Roxy froze, her eyes widening. The hairs on her arms stood up in fright. What the fuck was that. She had never heard anything like that before. It was both terrifyingly primitive and profoundly disturbing.

Her spoon dropped from her hand. Roxy couldn’t move, her body frozen with fear.

“Did anyone hear that sound?” Claire turned towards the distant jungle. Whatever it was that had made that sound, it was in the jungle. Roxy could only nod as she eyed the jungle herself. She obviously couldn’t see anything.

“I think, uh … unfortunately all of us did.” Answered the man from before.

The sound pierced through the night, once again. Someone screamed in fear.

Roxy jumped up as someone moved closer towards the jungle. Glancing at Claire, she found her standing up too, disregarding her half-eaten meal as she stepped closer to Roxy.

The survivors gathered together. There’s along silence, all of them watching the trees in the distance – afraid – and then, gasping nearly simultaneously as they watched the trees swaying in the distance as something scary, something big, moved through them. Whatever it was, it seemed to be disappearing deep into the jungle.

Holding her breath, Roxy didn’t dare to move. The group stood there, with the ocean behind their backs, watching the now unmoving jungle in fear, until a man finally dared to disrupt the silence:

“Terrific”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was Chapter 2. What'd you think?  
> I originally wanted to just skip a few not so important events from Season 1 to get to Season 2 faster but I don't want to rush this too much. But that means it will take a few more chapters until we'll get to Season 2.  
> Thank you for reading!!  
> -B.


	3. Friends & Failures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello.  
> I have returned with a fresh new chapter. I hope you like it, haha.  
> I've come to the decision to post a new chapter every time I write one, so you'll probably get about 2-3 chapters each week.  
> Thank you everyone who's reading this. I'm my first major fanfiction and I'm thankful for any review!!  
> -B.

The first week passed way too quickly, the days blurring together, making the seven days appear like a long weekend instead of, well, a week.

Roxy had found her glasses. Hurley, the man that had brought Claire and her the lasagna the first night, had offered to help her find them after she admitted she couldn’t see anything. Roxy had refused his help at first, not wanting to bother anyone with her problems, but Hurley had insisted. Told her he’d be glad to feel useful.

They had decided to start looking for them in the jungle, around the place she’d woken up at after the crash. Not having forgotten the mysterious and horrifying loud noise they’d heard the night before – Hurley had given it the name “Jungle Monster” – they’d been wary of wandering into the jungle at first. Wanting to be prepared for anything, they armed themselves with whatever they could find that could pass as a weapon, Roxy had found a long thin piece of shrapnel that she could use as a spear while Hurley decided to carry stones with him, planning to throw them at anything that might attack them.

It had been Hurley who had found her glasses. They’d reached the spot Roxy had woken up at after wandering around aimlessly in the jungle and begun looking through the bushes. Nearly an hour after later, Roxy had stopped with a sad sigh, already turning around to tell Hurley that they should give up and return to the beach, as Hurley exclaimed that he’d found them. And indeed, he did: they were hanging off a random tree branch about four meters above ground. At first Roxy had been ecstatic, happy to know she’ll be able to actually see again after they somehow manage to get her glasses off the tree. With difficulty, Roxy had climbed the tree, probably reopening her wounds with the stain and trusting Hurley to guide her (and perhaps even catch her in case she fell). She’d taken her time, mainly because she didn’t want to fall and break her neck - it would be rather embarrassing to survive a plan crash but die by falling off a tree – but also because it turned out that climbing a tree wasn’t a very easy task, especially if one couldn’t see farther ahead than a few dozen centimeters. And then, she had reached them.

Only to see that one of the lenses was missing.

She’d cursed, expressing her frustration, anger and disappointment in quite a few words in her mother tongue. While not understanding what she had said, as Hurley didn’t speak any German, he had been able to understand what her exclamation had contained, and asked her worriedly what had happened, replying with a honest “That sucks, dude”, as she’d told him about the missing glass.

Her frustration had been very strong, but Roxy was still happy about having at least half of her vision back.

The remaining right lens had been a little dirty, but nothing her sleeve couldn’t handle and she’d put them on, as soon as she’d cleaned it. The sharpness of the, well, everything, had been so beautiful she’d remained on the tree for a few more moments as she let her eye adjust to the change. She’d closed her left eye, knowing it would be unbearable to let it open while only being able to see sharply with only one eye. That had made her decline even more difficult, but gravity had assisted her and she was able to reach the ground safely.

They’d made their way back to the crash site, Hurley letting Roxy holding onto his arm as she got used to the poor depth perception using only eye entailed. Only as they reached the first wreckages of the plane and saw the first suitcases lying around, did she remember that she had bought a pair of spare glasses on the flight with her. She’d put them in her suitcase. All she had to do was find it.

At first, she’d thought that would be an easy task, given the fact that she’d seen – now clearly, thanks to the one functioning lens in her glasses – multiple survivors with their own suitcases. But she should’ve known that she’d never be able to solve a problem that easily. She’d spent the rest of the day looking for her suitcase, even asking Ethan for help, as she’d seen him carry a few suitcases out of the jungle. Who knows, maybe he’d seen hers? But he wasn’t able to help her out.  
Eventually, she’d given up on the third day of looking for it and accepted the fact that her suitcase was lost and she’d need to live with only one lens in her glasses. Keeping her left eye closed all the time had turned out to be more difficult than one would imagine, so she’d asked around if anyone had some clothes that were to torn to be worn and made herself an eye patch. That had earned her a few weird looks, a few concerned questions – especially from Jack, the doctor who had patched her up on the day of the crash – and a nickname from the longhaired blond dude who’s name she didn’t know. The first time he’d addressed her as “Nick Fury” she’d found it funny as she herself was a big fan of comic books and had been glad that he didn’t start calling her pirate themed names. But that had been before she’d found out how big of a jerk he was.

Sawyer, as it turned out, had gone on a quest on day two of their stay on the island with a bunch of other people, including the bitchy blonde woman she had heard shouting quite a lot, her brother/boyfriend, a brunette woman and two other dudes she didn’t know. On their journey into the unknown and creepy jungle they’d apparently came across a polar bear, which Sawyer had shot in self-defense. Roxy hadn’t known which part to be more shocked about, the part about the polar bear – since when do polar bears live on tropical islands??? – or the part with the gun.

Roxy disliked guns, just the thought of a random guy she didn’t know possessing a gun while the survivors struggled to get by on the island, made her feel uneasy.  
And on top of that, she had found out that Sawyer was in possession of her backpack. She’d asked him to give it to her, he wouldn’t have any use for most of the stuff in it anyway, but he’d refused. He wouldn’t even give Roxy her journal, which was filled mid-way with German entries. But, nope, he’d remained being a jerk about it and insisted on the fact that her backpack now belonged to him, as he’d been the one to find it.

The urge to punch him in the face for that had been strong, but Roxy had been able to hold herself back. But it had been close.

Eventually, it turned out that Roxy had been right about feeling uneasy und uncomfortable with an armed Sawyer. She’d been looking through some unclaimed suitcases, in search of some clothes she would use, as she had yet to find her own suitcase, when she’d heard the gun shot. At first, she’d feared the worst, that he’d shot someone who’d bothered him or something. It had turned out that he’d wanted to put the injured Marshall Jack has been trying to save out of his misery. Aiming for his heart, Sawyer had missed, causing the injured man even more pain. Jack had eventually finished what Sawyer had started and put the suffering man to rest.  
Roxy had had troubles sleeping that night.

They had burned the fuselage soon after the death of the Marshall. The survivors’ opinions were divided on whether or not they should to it, but they’d decided to do it in the end. Roxy had held herself out of the debate. Not being religious, she wouldn’t have cared much, had she been one of the dead bodies. But she knew others might have different opinions, so she’d decided to just follow whatever the rest of them had decided on. The survivors had even held a funeral that night.  
The day after that had been interesting. A bald man she’d only seen a few times had suddenly appeared with a case full of knives, introducing himself as John Locke and exclaimed that he’d go boar hunting. Roxy had doubted he’d actually succeed, but kept her mouth shut. The knife he’d thrown into the plane seat had been impressive, but she had been certain there was a big difference between throwing a knife at an unmoving object and actually hunting. But he’d showed up with a dead boar around his neck a few hours later. That had been the moment when Roxy had decided to stick with Locke in case anything went south.  
She’d met the Kwons soon after. While enjoying some time alone with a book she’d found in one of the unclaimed suitcases, she’d overheard them talking with each other in Korean. Roxy had noticed that the couple had avoided the rest of the survivors, so she’d been uncertain whether it would be a good idea to approach them or not, but she had eventually put her book down and introduced herself.

At the age of 19, Roxy had taken a gap year after finishing school and had spent nearly a whole year in South Korea, teaching some English classes to make some money. She’d picked up some Korean during her stay there, but only the basics, and over the years she’d forgotten most of it.  
The couple had eyed her curiously as she’d approached them, the man stepping in front of his wife as she nearly reached them. The look of confusion had quickly settled on their faces though, after she had introduced herself in Korean. The woman had recovered quickly and introduced herself as Sunhwa Kwon with a shining smile on her face. Her husband had been less enthusiastic but had seemed to remember his manners, as he’d eventually offered her a handshake and introduced himself as Jinsoo Kwon. Sun had asked her a question, but Roxy’s little knowledge of the Korean language had failed her, and she’d struggled her way through admitting that she only spoke a little Korean. She must have effed up whatever she’d said pretty badly, telling by the way the married couple had tried not to laugh, but they seemed to have understood her anyways. The next question she’d been asked had been spoken slower, and she’d been able to puzzle together that Jin wanted to know how she’d learned Korean. She’d still remembered a lot of random vocabulary, so she’d tried to do her best at explaining by dumbing it down to something like “I lived in Seoul for a year” and had asked them if they spoke any English in return. Sun had replied with a short “No English” and a shake of her head. After conversing in some more small talk, Roxy had found out that while she was able to understand most of what they said, she’d had troubles with stinging together a grammatically correct sentence. At least the Kwons seemed to appreciate the fact that they were able to talk with someone on this island, even if Jin acted a little cold towards her.

She’d excused herself from the conversation a while after and offered them to come to her if they needed any help with translating or something. Well, that’s what she’d wanted to say anyways, she was sure she had messed something up, but they had thanked her sincerely so Roxy guessed they’d been able to understand what she’d offered after all.

Wandering further down the beach towards the center of the camp the survivors have set up for themselves, Roxy sat down on a disembodies business class plane seat. There weren’t many people near-by, the nearest person to her was Jack, who appeared to be taking a nap in the middle of the day. While that was somewhat weird, Roxy didn’t think much of it, Jack has been looking quite a bit sleep deprived the last time she’d talked with him to have him give her wounds a look. He’d removed her bandages with tired eyes and then had given her an encouraging smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes as he told her they were nearly fully healed.  
Turning her attention to her book, she started reading it, deciding to finish the book in one go; it was just a small novel, she could read it in one or two hours. But she came no further than a few pages before the panicked shouts of a familiar British voice interrupted the silence.  
“Jack! Jack?! Hey, Jack!”

Roxanne dropped her book, hearing the urgency in Charlie’s voice. The brit was running towards the doctor in a hurry.

“You’ve gotta- someone’s out there!” He pointed towards the ocean, urging Jack to his feet. “The current! Someone’s-“

Roxy was instantly alert, scanning the water for anything out of place as she takes off running towards the shore with Jack hot on her heels. She was just about able to make out an arm frantically waving for help far out in the ocean. Fuck!

“Stay here Roxy!” demanded Jack as he reached the water, already pulling off his shirt as he dives in. Obviously not listening to him – she’d been a professional swimmer once, of course she’s not going to just stay put and watch – she shrugged off her jeans as fast as she could and threw off her glasses, knowing they would only bother while she swam, and dove in right behind the doctor.

She sprinted through the waves, her body immediately adapting to the familiarity of the water. Her head emerged every few strokes, cutting through the surface to gasp for air, as she swam towards the person in the distance, her experience and swimming abilities letting her catch up with Jack and overtake him. It only took her a few seconds to close the distance between herself and the drowning person, taking a deep breath as she looked around desperately, trying to see any sign of them, but to no avail. They had disappeared under the surface.

Gasping for air, she dives underneath the surface, only vaguely noticing Jack doing the same next to her. Both of them emerged back to the surface at the same time, gasping for air and looking at each other, their eyes asking a silent question, before diving back under and looking around frantically, hoping to-  
There! Signaling for Jack, she dove deeper into the water as her eyes fell on someone in the water. Together, they managed to pull them to the surface, gasping for oxygen as they held the victim above water.

It was Boone. Fortunately, he began coughing up water and gasping for air right away.

“Deep breaths, c’mon man – you’re okay” Jack tried to calm him as Roxy held him above the water. Jack took him from her, wrapping him in a cross chest carry and beginning to swim back towards the shore, Roxy close behind, as Boone struggled to say something. He was completely spent, to exhausted to keep his eyes open, his lips barely moving as he tried to get something out.

“Did you,” he started, coughing a few times before being able to continue, “get her?”

Roxy froze in terror. Her? Was someone else out there?!

She whipped her head around, stilling in time with Jack as Boone continued.

“The woman… out there… I was trying to…” He focused “Did you get her?”

FUCK! She instantly turned around towards where they’ve found Boone. And there! She saw it. It was a woman, barely able to hold her head above the water as she struggled against the waves. She was about to go under!

Roxy wasted no time diving back into the water, now swimming as fast as her body allowed her to, barely catching Jack shouting her name in panic.

The woman had gone under by the time Roxy had reached the place she’d last seen her, but Roxy dove underneath the surface, her arms, legs, heart and mind all furiously dedicated to saving the drowning woman. She swam around, trying to make out something in the endless expanse of blue. And there!

She dove even deeper, reaching the woman with a few strokes, her lungs and ears protesting against the lack of oxygen and the depth of the water. She took the woman by her armpits, heaving her up towards the surface, kicking in the water with all her power as she pulled the motionless body with her.

She broke the surface a few moments later and wrapped the women in her arms just like Jack did with Boone a few minutes before. The woman’s eyelids were closed, her lips blue and open. She wasn’t breathing.

Panic seized Roxy, but she willed herself to focus on getting back to the shore, holding the woman’s head above the water as she pulled her motionless body with her.  
She reached the shore fast, focusing on keeping the woman’s head above the surface as she hurried across the water. Jack had already turned back and helped her pull the woman to shore as she finally reached the safety of the beach. Relieving her of the unconscious person, Jack immediately went to work, trying CPR to revive the woman.

Some of the others were there, she saw Walt and his dad Michael, as well as Sun and Hurley, all standing around the scene and watching with fear filled eyes. Boone was lying on the sand a few meters further away, Kate and Charlie sitting next to him.

Roxy collapsed into the sand, her exhaustion taking over as she gasped for air, her heart pounding in her chest frantically as she her body fought for oxygen. Hurley helped her sit up while someone else wrapped a towel around her shoulders. She glanced towards the still unconscious woman. Jack was still trying to revive her, but Roxy knew it was too late. 

The woman was dead. 

And it was her fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that happened.  
> The new chapter is probably gonna drop tomorrow, so please check it out.  
> -B.


	4. Together, not alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. Here's Chapter 4, as I promised yesterday :)  
> Hope you like it!  
> I'll probably post the next one in two-four days!  
> -B.

To say Roxy was upset about what had happened was under-exaggerating.

She still sat at the beach, just a few meters away from where the woman had lain after she’d been pulled out of the water, and stared out towards the ocean. After Jack had given up and declared the woman as dead, someone had taken it upon themselves to carry her away from the center of attention. Someone was probably already gigging up a grave for her.

Roxy shuddered, pushing her glasses further up her nose as it slipped down. A few people had stayed with her after the woman had been carried away, asking her if she was alright. How could she be alright? It had been her fault that the woman had died. She would be still alive, had Roxy been faster.

She signed tiredly, letting the air out of her mouth in an exhausted way. The others had eventually wandered off, continuing with their day. Hurley had stayed with her a few more minutes before patting her on her shoulder and giving it an encouraging squeeze, probably noting that it would be better for her to be alone with her thoughts for a while.

So she had stayed right where she was. Unmoving.

It has been a while since the… accident has happened. She didn’t know exactly how much time has passed, but it must have been an hour or two.

“Hey”

Roxy’s eyes fell on an approaching Kate as she turned her head towards the sound. She offered her a nod in greeting before turning back towards the water.

“Wanna talk?” She offered as she sat down next to the German woman and followed her lead in staring out towards the horizon.

“Not really,” She sighed, thankful that Kate hadn’t asked her if she was alright. “But thanks.”

“Did you know her?,” asked Kate, ignoring Roxy’s answer.

Roxy paused, now feeling even worse: “No, I didn’t”

“Her name was Joanna,” began Kate, “She wasn’t supposed to be on the plane”

Roxy let out a dark laugh at that. Funny thing. Was anyone supposed to be on the plane?

“What?”

Oops. She hadn’t realized she’d said that out loud.

“I wasn’t supposed to be on the plane either” She admitted, stretching her legs as she shot a glance at Kate. She was watching her with curious eyes, urging her to continue talking.

“Do you know “White Books?” asked Roxy.

Kate’s eyebrows lifted as she thought about what books have to do with anything.

“Aren’t most books white on the inside?”

Roxy huffed a laugh, a real one. “I mean the book shop. Have you heard about it?”

“Ehhh,” Kate paused, thinking for a second, before continuing, “No, sorry, it doesn’t ring any bells”

“Would’ve been strange if you did, to be honest,” She admitted, “It’s a book seller company. Very famous in Europe. Kinda like Barnes & Noble?”

Kate nodded, her eyes telling her to continue.

“It was founded by my granddad. My name – Weiss - means white in German. I’m the CEO”

Kate’s eyebrows practically disappeared into her hairline in disbelief.

“Oh?”

“The company has been trying to become more international but we haven’t had much success yet. We planned to found a subsidiary in Australia, so I flew across the globe to take care of some business and signed the contract just 10 days ago. The first shop is planned to open at the end of next year.” She paused, furrowing her own eyebrows. Had it been really only 10 days ago?

“I went out with a few colleges for a few drinks to celebrate. Met some random blond dude at a bar. He asked what I was doing in Sydney. Told him I was on a business trip and we were celebrating a successful sign of contract. He told me the proper way to celebrate was to take a few days off, go on a spontaneous vacation.” She shook her head. The whole conversation had been ridiculous.

“At first I brushed it off. But then a few days later I found myself throwing some clothes into a suitcase and driving to the airport, not even knowing why I’m doing it. When I arrived, I asked the lady at the reception where the next flight that I would be able to catch is flying to. I had the choice between Los Angeles and Japan. So I threw a coin and bought the last ticket for Flight 815, just a few hours before take-off, thinking how unbelievably ridiculous the whole situation was.”  
Kate let out a laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah!” She couldn’t help but join in as Kate continued giggling.

“I think that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life” she admitted, still chuckling.

“It’s quite unbelievable, isn’t it? And now here we are” She stretched out her arm, gesturing around the crash site. A look towards the ocean pulling her back to present.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, both watching the rhythmic blue waves.

“Wanna come and help look through the unclaimed suitcases? I still haven’t found mine” Offered Kate. She stood up and offered Roxy her hand in a silent offer to help her up.

“Sure, why not. I’m also still looking for mine, I could use some spare clothes” She took the offered hand and let herself be pulled to her feet. Glancing down at her clothes (she had put her earlier discharged pants back on after getting dry), she wrinkled her nose as her eyes fell upon her dirty clothes. Yeah, she really needs to change out of them.

Kate led her towards a big pile of clothes and suitcases further up the beach.

The women started sorting through the piles in silence, asking the other on their opinion on a random item occasionally. Roxy found a few oversized shirts and a jacket and claimed them for herself while Kate sorted through the pants.

“You haven’t found a hairbrush, have you?”

Roxy looked up, seeing a familiar pregnant Australian woman. Giving her a smilein greeting, she shook her head while Kate answered.

“Nope, sorry.”

Claire groaned. “I must’ve looked in twenty suitcases today and I can’t find one. Weird. You’d think everyone packs a-“

Claire stopped talking and took a step backwards, losing her balance. She would have fallen, had Kate not reacted and steadied her so fast. Roxy dropped whatever she had been holding and jumped to her side, helping Kate steady her.

“Woah, You okay?”

“Yeah it’s just the heat.” Claire shook it off. “Oh, and I’m pregnant” she joked, trying to lighte the mood.

“Oh, really?”

“Congratulations” Deadpanned Roxy, sharing a worried look with Kate behind Claire’s back.

Kate offered her a half-filled bottle of water which Claire takes appreciatively. Roxy licked her dried lips at the sight of the water bottle. It’s been a while since she’d last drunk something and the swim from the morning had her carving for some fresh water.

“Thanks”

“Wanna sit? You can help us sort the practical clothes from the impractical clothes” Kate asked.

Claire nodded. “How can you tell the difference?”, she asked with a smile?

Roxy held up a pair of jeans. “Practical,” Reaching for a negligee, “Impractical”

Claire laughed at that while Kate shot her an amused grin. The pregnant woman took a seat and her eyes lit up as she spotted a sun hat, which she didn’t hesitate to put on.

“Can I ask you something? Don’t mean to get personal, but I’m curious.” Asked Claire.

Kate stiffened for a blink of an eye. Roxy would have missed has she not glanced at Kate right at that moment. Claire didn’t seem to have noticed anything.

“Yeah, shoot”

“Are you a Gemini, Kate?”

Roxy lifted an eyebrow. That question seemed to come out of nowhere.

Surprisingly, it turned out that Kate was, in fact, a Gemini. Claire then turned to Roxy and guessed her zodiac sign. She had been right once again, as she correctly guessed her to be an Aries. It was somewhat impressive, even though Roxy cared much about Astrology. The pregnant woman had offered to do their charts but both Kate and Roxy had declined. Noticing Claire’s well-hidden disappointment, she decided to indulge her a little bit after all.

“What about compatibilities instead? Which zodiac am I the most compatible with?” she asked with a grin. “I do get lonely sometimes, especially since there’s nothing to do around here”, she joked in a very exaggerated way. “Who knows, maybe I’ll find the love of my life on this island.”

Claire giggled while Kate rolled her eyes and tried to hide her smile.

“Well, you can’t go wrong with a Sagittaurus! I heard Steve was born in December, why don’t you do and ask him out on a romantic stroll across the beach?” Claire teased back, making Roxy laugh out loud.

...

Frantic and hectic shouts of woke Roxy from her nap. Her exhaustion has caught up with her, so she had laid down for a short power nap, hoping it might restore some of her energy. She had fallen into a deep slumber instead, only woken up by a heated argument.

It took her a few moments to shake the sleep off and to sit up, her body still exhausted and low on energy. She really should go and drink something. Noticing the slowly setting sun as she left her excuse of a tent, she deduced that she’d ended up sleeping more than she had planned. It had been early afternoon as she had gone inside her tent and now the night was falling. She stumbled across the sand in a daze, pushing ger glasses up the bridge of her nose as she tried to force her eye that wasn’t hidden by the make shift eye patch, focus. The argument appeared to be coming from the medical tent Jack had sat up.

Most of the survivors stood around the tent, watching someone getting beat up. Roxy jogged towards it, black spots appearing in her vision she did so. Her lips were dry and her head felt too light. And honestly? She felt like she was about to faint from dehydration.

She reached the group just in time to see Boone get pushed to the ground by a very angry Charlie. What happened?

“LEAVE HIM ALONE”, came Jacks voice from somewhere behind her.

The mob stopped, Boone spitting blood as the castaways stepped away from him. All eyes were on Jack now. He was unshaven and looked even more exhausted than she felt. But there was a hopeful light in his eyes.

“It’s been six days and we’re all still waiting for them to come,” He began, before asking the question eyeryone has been asking themselves but were too afraid to say out loud: “But what if they don’t?”

With that, he stepped forward, engaging each person one at a time as he speaks powerfully and fearlessly.

“We have to stop waiting. We need to start figuring things out. A woman died this morning because she went for a morning swim,” He pointed at Boone, poor beaten up Boone, “He tried to save her life and now you’re about to crucify him because he took some water?”

He paused, letting the words sink in.

“We can’t do this. We can’t just hope it’ll figure itself out. It’s time to start organizing. We need to figure out how we’re going to survive. I found water -- fresh water in the valley. I’ll take a group in at first light. You don’t want to come? Then you find another way to contribute because “every man for himself” isn’t gonna work anymore, people. Last week, most of us were strangers. But now we’re all here. And God knows how long we’re gonna be here, but... „ he broke off with a dramatic pause, „If we can’t live together, we’re gonna die alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, in this Chapter we've got to know Roxy a little better haha  
> I hope you liked it enough to stick around for the next ones XD  
> -B.


	5. The valley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have returned with another chapter! Hope you like it ;)  
> I'd also like to mention that unfortunately, we won't be meeting our beloved Ben for quite a few chapters. I don't wanna skip Season 1 all together, but I'm trying to speed it up as well as I can.   
> Well, what do you think? How was it?   
> Pls leave a review, that would be much appreciated.   
> -B.

Jack had stayed true to his word when he’d said he wanted to leave to the fresh water at first light. Knowing they’re gonna get fresh water, the survivors have slit up the few bottles they’d had and drank most of it, leaving empty plastic bottles for Jack and his group carry the water in.

The little water she’d had, had helped and fortunately Roxy didn’t feel like she was going to faint any second anymore. The mere thought of fresh water gave her a big energy boost and so she found herself approaching Kate and Jack while they packed their bags for the trip through the jungle. Roxy had originally wanted to stay at the beach, but she was overcome with a sudden urge to go with them.

“Mind if I join you?” she asked as she caught up with them.

“Only if you don’t help me with the water bottles” teased Kate, in the middle of shucking empty water bottles into her backpack. Roxy joined her with a smile, relieving her of a few and stuffing them into the backpack she’d found the day before.

Kate resumed her conversation with the surgeon as Jack wrestled with the tangled straps of his pack.

“I want to know”

“Well, you’re not gonna know” declined Jack in a playful way.

“What’s the big deal?” asked Kate, persistent on knowing whatever she wanted to know.

“It’s not a big deal”

Roxy grinned as she watched the two and watched Kate stand up, stepping close to Jack to help him with his straps, her arms brushing his tattoos skin repeatedly. Huh. Roxy hadn’t seen that coming. But after thinking about it for a few moments she agreed that it was kinda obvious that they’d caught interest in each other. They made a good pair.

“It’s just the tattoos and you don’t add up,” Kate answered playfully, “What’re you – one of those really hardcore spinal surgeons?”

Jack smiled, still not interested in sharing his inking stories. “Yeah, that’s me. Hardcore.”

Roxy huffed a laugh.

The repartee came to an abrupt end as Charlie joined the trio, his own backpack over his back.

“If you two are through verbally copulating, maybe we ought to get a move on. We have a beach full of people waiting for us to go get them some drinking water, he nodded towards John, the camp’s unofficial official hunter, “and the Great White Hunter’s getting restless.”

The mentioned man was waiting by the tree line, stoic, shaving his stubble with a disposable razor.

“Okay, let’s do this.” Came Jack’s lead.

“Hey, Charlie” began Kate, shooting a glance at Jack, “Ask Jack about his tattoos”

“Ah, you two have an inside joke. How wonderful for you both.” Replied Charlie, sarcasm dripping from his words.

“What do you think, doc?” Roxy started instead, grinning from ear to ear as she pulled down the collar of her t-shirt to give them a quick glance at her tattooed collar and shoulder, “I show you mine, you show me yours?”

Jack and Kate actually laugh as the little group of five heads off into the jungle, following Jack’s lead. The group marched through the jungle in silence, only stopping a few times when Jack wanted to reassure himself that they were going in the right direction.

“Water’s this way” announced Jack after a while, pointing at a stone corridor.

“How’d you find this place?”, asked Kate, looking around the place in curiosity.

“Luck”

“Luck?”

“Luck”, repeated Jack as he turned into a narrow stone corridor. Following close behind, Roxy marveled at the place that appeared in front of her eyes. Her eyes soon fell on a huge pile of airplane wreckage on a corner by the spring.

“Woah”

“It’s amazing” came from Locke.

“Some luck” grinned Kate.

Jack only nodded before getting straight to business and walking towards the spring, Kate closely following behind. Sliding her backpack off her shoulders, she zipped it open, taking out a few water bottles as she also neared the fresh water.

“Hey guys? Shouldn’t somebody look through this stuff? See if there’s anything useful in there?” Asked Charlie as he stopped by the wreckage.

The brit looked around for affirmation but Jake and Kate were too busy filling their water bottles. Roxy looked at Locke.

“He’s got a point” He agrees.

“I do?”

“Yeah,” Jack turned from his water gathering, “Bring, me your bottles – keep your eye out for any medical supplies – drugs in particular”

Roxy watched as Charlie fidgeted.

“Drugs. Right”

After having dropped his backpack, Locke stepped up towards the wreckage. Roxy grabbed his left behind pack and held out an arm for Charlie’s, taking all three – hers included – to Jack, who barely acknowledged her as she placed them by his side.

She then joined Locke, who was already inspecting the insides of a few suitcases.

“Charlie, can you- she looked up, wanting to ask him to bring over the few suitcases on the other side of the valley so they’d be all in one place, but found him gone, the place he’d stood before, vacant.

“Charlie?” she raised her voice as she called out for him again, this time more worried. Roxy couldn’t help but think back to the first night they’d spent on this island and the loud noises they’d heard from the jungle.

She glanced at Locke, who seemed to know where the brit had gone off to, and followed him as he dashed towards the narrow stone corridor they’d entered the valley through.

Tailing behind Locke, Roxy looked around for Charlie and became relieved as she spotted him behind a tree. The short feeling of relief quickly changes to confusion however as she watched him take something from his pocket with shaking hands. What was it?

No.

It couldn’t be…

Was he-?

“Don’t move!” shouted Locke suddenly, startling both Roxy. The latter quickly dropped his arms, not so discreetly dropping his … stash … into the pocket he’d taken it from.

“Look, I was just going to take a-“ Charlie started to talk himself out of the situation he’d been found in. Locke, however, didn’t seem to be very interested in his excuses, as he interrupted him once again. Roxy couldn’t help but feel a little pity for Charlie. While she herself didn’t support the usage of drugs, she hadn’t thought Locke would actually call him out so directly.

“Do. Not. Move” He repeated, shooting a quick glance at Roxy before adding a “you too”.

What?

But before she could ask him, why exactly she shouldn’t be moving, Locke turned towards the entrance of the valley and - keeping his tone even - called out for Jack and Kate.

They came running through the corridor in no time.

“What’s going on?” asked Jack.

“He’s standing on a beehive” replied Locke, still calm as ever, as if he was discussing the weather.

Roxy felt her heart drop into her pants. He’s what?!

“He’s what?!”

Whipping her head around, she and Charlie looked down towards his feet and their sight fell upon the massive beehive buried into the soft earth under Charlie’s feet.  
Fuck!

“What’s a beehive doing here?! Beehives are in trees!” exclaimed the brit panicked.

“What now?” asked Jack, relying on Locke to know what to do.

“If he moves, he’ll split the hive.”

And of course, as if they’d heard Locke’s words, that’s the moment when the hive came to life. A trickle of bees emerged from the ground, one of them landing on a squirming Charlies torso.

“I don’t like bees- I have an irrational fear of bees- I think I’m allergic to bees! Bees and I-“

“Will you please be quiet?” hissed John calmly, shutting Charlie up.

Locke turned to Jack and Kate as a bee landed on Charlie’s arm.

“We need to find something to seal the hive-“

“From the wreckage?” Suggested Kate, “Something we can fit over it?”

“Hurry” nodded Locke before turning to Charlie, “Just hold on, Charlie”

Kate and Jack rushed off, back to the valley through the corridor. The remaining could do nothing else but wait motionlessly, hoping Charlie won’t split the hive while he tried not to squirm.

“Are they still coming out? Tell me they’re not still coming out.”

“Charlie, be quiet” hissed Roxy. She couldn’t help but pity Charlie; a dozen of bees have already landed on him, buzzing and flitting all over his upper body.  
Kate and Jack rushed back to the trio, the latter carrying a suitcase from the wreckage.

“Keep still, man. I’m gonna try to cover the hive…”

“This is the most crap idea ever – it’s never going to work!”

“Pull yourself together, son”, said Locke calmly.

“Listen mate, it wouldn’t be an irrational fear of bees if I could just pull myself together, now would it?”

And then a bee stuck Charlie in the neck.

He cursed loudly; reeling from pain, Charlie stomped down on the beehive. A massive dense cloud of bees erupts from the earth, the buzz becoming a fearsome roar.  
Everyone took off running, Roxy dashing into the valley with Jack and Kate hot on her heels. Jack whipped his shirt off his torso, shaking and throwing it against the wall. Feeling the first sting on her lower back, she pulled off her own shirt and threw it away while she ran into the opposite direction, hoping they wouldn’t follow her. She backed into a cave, as if she could hide from the swarm. It had helped though. She stayed hidden for a few more moments, hoping the bees would leave her alone, as she heard a loud cry of fear.

Jumping from her hiding place, she dashed towards the place she’d heard the scream come from, snatching her shirt from the ground as she ran by, shaking it in order to shake out any remaining insects.

She found Kate and Jack in one of the caves and immediately blushed as her eyes fell upon them. They were both shirtless just like her, standing very close to another and staring at each other in a very sexually charged moment.

Their moment was broken however as Kate noticed Roxy. The German woman only then becoming fully aware of her nudity and raised her shirt in front of herself in order to cover some parts of herself at least.

“There’s … skeletons.” Whispered Kate, creeped out, “Dead people”

Roxy frowned as she looked around, soon finding herself looking at two skeletons behind Kate. Goosebumps creeped up her back.

She watched as Jack knelt down next to them, transfixed, as he studied them.

“Who are they? How’d they…?” wondered Kate.

“I can’t exactly perform an autopsy... but there doesn’t seem to be any major trauma to their bones... someone laid them to rest here...” was Jack’s answer.

“Someone?” asked Roxy both bewildered and alarmed.

“I don’t know who”

“Where’d they come from?” wanted Kate to know next, just wondering out loud.

“Didn’t you guys shoot a polar bear last week?” countered Jack.

“Yeah”

“Where’d that come from?”

Kate shrugged, stifling a grin.

“Any idea how long they’ve been dead?” inquired Roxy.

Jack gently ran his fingers over the unrecognizable tattered clothes hanging off the bones.

“Long. Takes forty, fifty years for clothing to degrade like this…”, he paused, fingering something in the pocket of one of the skeletons, before removing a tiny leather bag. Opening the twine holding it together, he turned the bag over his open hand, letting two polished stones slip into his hand. One was white, the other black.

Huh. How weird.

“Hello?! Anybody in there?” came Locke’s voice from outside the cave.

“We’re here!” shouted Roxy, standing the closest to the entrance. She watched as Jack slipped the stones back into the pouch and put it into his own pocket.  
As Locke and Charlie approached the caves, Roxy couldn’t help but wince in sympathy as she spotted the prominent bee strings on Charlie’s neck and forehead.  
“Everyone alright?” asked Locke, ignoring the fact that all three of them were shirtless. They all affirmed.

“Brilliant. You run away fantastically. Well done. I’m glad my diversion spared you. I was only stung several hundred times. Oh – and...,” With that, Charlie produced Kate’s shirt from behind his back, “someone dropped this.”

Roxy pulled the shirt she was still holding in front of herself even higher, trying to hide behind it as she watched Kate taking back her shirt sheepishly.

“It was full of bees”

“I’d have thought “C”’s actually” Chuckled Charlie, but neither Jack nor Locke shared his mirth. Roxy only rolled her eyes.

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed the brit as he spotted the skeletons, “Are those guys who were here before us?”

Roxy furrowed her brows, glancing around, seeing Locke training his glare at Charlie just as confused as she herself was.

“What are you talking about?”

Roxy raised an eyebrow, waiting for an answer. She noticed the quick look Charlie exchanged with Kate and Jack before he corrected himself.

“Nothing. I mean…just…there could’ve been people here before us, right?”

Roxy exchanged a quick glance with Locke; he also appeared to have noticed that the brit knew something they didn’t. Instead of addressing it however, he kneeled over the skeletons.

“This would prove it, but who are these men?”

“Actually, one of them is female” corrected Jack.

“Our own Adam and Eve”  
…  
Kate and Roxy walked across the valley, their backpacks full of filled water bottles, when Locke stepped up to them.

“I think one of us ought to stay and help Charlie salvage the wreckage”

Roxy raised an eyebrow at first, but then she caught the look Locke shot her, suddenly understanding what he planned to do, as she remembered how their earlier fight with the bees had started.

“Are you offering?” asked Kate.

Locke gestured towards Charlie picking through the wreckage.

“Sure. Gives me a chance to get to know Mr. Pace a little better.”

At their confused looks he added: “That’s his last name.”

Charlie Pace… somehow that name sounded very familiar to her, but she didn’t quite know how…

But before one of them could ask how he knew that, Locke has already returned to the wreckage to help Charlie.

Roxy glanced at Kate; her decision already made.

“You know, I think I’ll stay behind too”

Kate looked at her with raised brows before shrugging.

“You sure?”

Roxy nodded.

“Fine. Give me your bag, I’ll carry it back to the camp”

Roxy did as she was told, knowing it has been a while since they’ve left the beach, the others must be quite eager to finally have some more water supplies. Then she joined Locke and Charlie at the wreckage.

“What’s your last name?”, asked Locke after a few minutes of looking through the suitcases.

Roxy looked up, wondering why he wanted to know.

“Weiss”

“Well, Roxanne Weiss,” he smiled, “I believe I’ve found your suitcase”, he finished, holding up a small and very familiar dark blue suitcase. It was dirty but still intact, the stickers with her name and destination still on it.

Roxy practically squealed in delight, as she dashed to him and took the found suitcase. Finally! She couldn’t wait to wear her own clothes again! But the one thing she was the most excited about were her glasses. It had been a last-minute decision to pack them and she was very grateful she’d ended up throwing them into her suitcase.

She basically ripped open the zipper as she opened the bag, rummaging through the contents on search for her glasses.  
They must be there somewhere…. Aha!!

She found them squashed between a few t-shirts, grinning from ear to ear as she pulled it free. The sunlight reflected off the lenses as she inspected it for demage, cursing herself for not packing it in a case. Her fingers reached the one-lensed glasses resting on her nose, slipping it off and placing it into her suitcase, before removing the now unnecessary eye patch from around her face. It took her left eye a few moments to get used to the light, but after blinking a few times, she soon recovered and put on her spare glasses, smiling even wider as she was finally able to see properly again. She had gotten used to the bad depth deception and seeing with only one eye, which made seeing clearly with both eyes again a bit weird but it still felt like the most wonderful thing she’s ever felt in a long while.  
“Pity, I think you rocked the whole pirate look you had going on” joked Charlie.

She ignored him as she looked around the valley, taking in the scenery with both eyes. She couldn’t help but think about how inviting the whole place looked and, remembering the accident that had happened the day before, how much safer the valley was compared to the beach. Especially with the water supply at hand.  
As she turned back towards the wreckage, she couldn’t help but wonder if there was enough space for the survivors to live comfortably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading Chapter 5! What do yo think?  
> The next Chapter will be posted in 2-4 days, hope you stick around.  
> -B.


	6. Home, sweet home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello~~  
> First of all, sorry for the late update, this chapter was supposed o be posted yeterday but I was very busy until 2 am, so I decided to do it today instead.   
> Hope you like it!   
> -B.

As it turned out, Roxy hadn’t been the only person to think about potentially moving into the valley. 

The sun had already set by the time the three of them had finally fished down Charlie’s guitar from a tree so they had decided to spend the night in one of the caves. Locke and Charlie had wandered off multiple times while sorting through the plane wreckage, which Roxy had found quite odd at first, until she noticed Charlie’s shaking hands and remembered he had been about to take drugs before the whole bee fiasco started. Roxy had decided to let Locke handle it, he had been practically breathing down Charlie’s neck anyway. At one point Charlie had tried to slip out of the valley unnoticed, but just like all the other times before, Locke had followed him and when they eventually came back, they’d asked her to help them get Charlie’s guitar from a tree. She had agreed of course and when Charlie’s back was turned to them, she’d sent a questioning look at Locke, who in turn, had patted one of his pockets, answering her silent question. She had no idea how Locke had managed to take Charlie’s drug, but telling by the brit’s enthusiasm over his guitar and the lack of anger being sent towards Locke, she guessed it had been somewhat voluntary.

They had prepared for the night; she’d changed into her own clothes while the men were away collecting wood for the fire and had prepared their own sleeping spaces. Charlie could barely keep his hands off his instrument. He had claimed a niche on the rockface and cradled his guitar, his hand trembling as he struggled to pluck out a few notes. The musician didn’t let his trembling hands stop himself however, even though he couldn’t hit the notes dead on, every time Charlie hit a string and an un-amplified sound twanged from the instrument, he couldn’t help but smile. Roxy herself couldn’t resist a small smile every time he managed to actually hit a note.

“Hello?”

The three of them exchanged confused looks as the call of the survivors’ doctor echoes through the valley. They turned to see Jack entering the valley with a group of people.

“What’s this?”, asked Locke, stepping over to meet them.

Jack flashed a smile and shrugged.

“New tenants”

Roxy looked at the arriving castaways; some of them already going about the task of discovering the valley right away. Hurley, however, marched to Roxy’s makeshift camp and sat down next to his friend, exhausted from the walk.

“A short walk… they lied” he answered over Roxy’s raised eyebrow.

“Mind sharing your cave, dude?” he asked, already knowing she probably wouldn’t say no. They had become fast friends in the last week, hanging around quite often and going mango hunting together nearly daily. Hurley was nice; he had a sense of humor that matched hers and they both shared similar interests. Happy to be sharing a cave with someone, she nodded.

“Awesome”

He went on to put on his headphones, but stopped, looking at her once again with a tilted head.

“Where’s your eyepatch?”

“Found my suitcase”, she grinned, carefully tapping the left lens of her glasses with her fingernail, showing off her fully functional glasses.

“That’s cool, dude”, he answered before finishing what he’d started to do and putting on his headphones.

Turning her head away from her friend, she watched as Jack and several of the others started filing up water containers at the spring, happy to be able to drink without the fear of the water running out.

It’s not so bad, she thought as she watched them with a content look on her face.

She could get used to living like this.

…

She had gone back to the beach the next day, to collect her stuff from her little tent from the beach. She didn’t have a lot of things besides her suitcase, only some clothes, some books and a backpack, all of which technically didn’t really belong to her but to a person who has died in the crash. She’d met Sayid, Kate and Boone, all three of them standing around something Sayid had built together, discussing some sort of plan which had to be top secret, by the way they all stopped talking about it when she’d approached them.

After collecting her stuff, she decided to look for Claire to ask her if she’d like to join her and move to the valley. Claire had declined, claiming she was perfectly content at the beach, enjoying the sunny weather.

So Roxy had sat with her for a few minutes, before deciding to head back to the caves. She had marched through the jungle in a content state, enjoying the hot weather as she moved between the trees.

However, the sight that had greeted her as she arrived at the valley made her happy state of mind disappear very quickly. Her heart dropped into her pants as her eyes fell upon the caved in cave. The castaways were digging through the collapsed cave, trying to get into it, which made Roxy fear for the worst. Was someone trapped in there?

Her fear became even more prominent as she found out Jack had been inside the cave as it collapsed. She had joined the digging people, trying to move rocks and make an opening, but to no avail. They dug and dug, becoming filthy and exhausted as they continued to remove rocks and dirt from the mountain of rubble sealing the entrance. Hurley had been about to remove a particularly large rock when someone shouted at them to stop.

“What do you mean stop, dude?”, wanted Hurley to know as they all turned to see Michael rushing over to them, Boone and Walt close behind, “Jack’s in there!”

“And if you remove that rock you might bring down the whole cave ceiling down on top of him!”

Roxy stepped back from the rubble, knowing he was right. But how should they save Jack?

Michael ordered his son to get back, not wanting him to be anywhere near the collapsed cave. The young child protested, not understanding the reason for his father’s rash words but complied and sulked as he pulled his dog Vincent to the stream for a drink.

Michael, as it turned out, had eight years of experience in construction work, experience which helped him to advise them where to dig safely. They were able to displace the rocks to reveal a hole, immediately stopping as they did so.

Hurley called out for Jack, everyone holding their breaths as they waited, or more like, hoped, anxiously for an answer. Roxy feared for the worst as Hurley called out for Jack again.

A cheer of relief echoed through the valley as Hurley informed them that Jack had heard him.

The castaways tried to make the whole bigger, digging and removing rocks, their arms full of scratches and dirt, until they were stopped by Michael once again. Roxy, secretly glad for a little rest, rubbed her aching arms as Michael told them about what they should do next.

The whole was roughly the size of a tire, getting someone through that wouldn’t be an easy task. Sun volunteered to go in Korean, her husband forbidding it immediately. Roxy had understood Sun’s words but only understood half of what Jin was trying to say, but from the few words she could make out, he was everything but pleased about his wife’s suggestion.

“Dude! We don’t understand Chinese!”

Roxy frowned, stepping up to correct him, but Michael was faster.

“Korean, man. They’re Korean.”

Roxy nearly missed the fleeting look he shared with Sun while he said that.

“She volunteered to go through the hole” translated Roxy, ignoring the previous silent exchange of looks, “He’s not so fond of the idea, as you can tell” With that she gestured towards Jin, who was still protesting angrily.

All eyes turned to her.

“You speak Korean?!”

“Not really”, she corrected as she tuned towards Boone, “I only know some Korean”

“You could’ve told us sooner-!”, started Hurley to protest, but was interrupted by Charlie who had suddenly appeared.

“I’ll do it”

He looked like hell, but the look in his eyes told Roxy he was determined on doing it.

A heated argumentation broke out between the survivors. Everyone has noticed Charlie wasn’t at his best and wanted to offer to go in themselves but the brit had insisted, determined on being the one to crawl through the small tunnel. Which he did.

However, the castaway didn’t seem to be able to catch a break for once, as the tunnel basically collapsed while Charlie crawled through it.

Kate had arrived to the caves at exactly that moment, desperate to keep digging through the caved in cave and even though the rest of the survivors knew they wouldn’t be able to reach them as there was nothing really to dig into, they’d joined her, once again moving rock and boulders. Roxy had been close to giving up, needing a break to catch her breath, as a shout ran through the valley.

“Hey! It’s the doctor!”

She turned, as did everyone else, towards Walt and then towards where he was pointing excitedly at.

Charlie and Jack, both dirty and exhausted, were walking towards them.

At the sight of them, Roxy had felt like the weight of the world has been lifted off her shoulders, the corners of her mouth turning up in a relieved and happy smile, as she jogged towards the two. Kate, just like Roxy, has taken off running towards them, practically throwing her arms around Jack as she wrapped him in a hug.  
“How did you get out?” wondered Hurley, asking the question everyone was thinking in their head.

“Charlie found a way”

…

Later, much later, as things are settling down in the valley after Charlie’s and Jack’s return, Roxy sat in her own makeshift bad and stared at her hand in confusion, inspecting the fresh wounds on her hands. She couldn’t remember where they had come from.

After Charlie’s return with the doctor, everyone had wandered off to clean themselves, the digging has left everyone who has helped dirty and filthy. She remembered staring at her bruised but not wounded hands as she used them to scoop up some water to wash her face; the wounds hadn’t been there then. She also remembered cleaning Boone’s own wounded hand after he’d shyly asked her to, her own clean and unwounded hands wrapping Boone’s scraped up one with some bandages made out of a ruined shirt. So she must have hurt herself after that. But when? And how?

Roxy furrowed her brows as she lifted her eyes off her mysteriously scraped up hand to glance at Boone who was currently in the middle of filling up an empty water bottle, and couldn’t help but think how similar her own wound looked to the one she had cleaned and bandaged on Boone’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What you think?  
> This chapter is a little short, but the next one has 4,5k so that should make up for that, lol.  
> Here's a little spoiler for Chapter 7:
> 
> “Hurley?”
> 
> A frown was set on his face, his eyes glancing up and down the manifest with what looked like fear.  
> “Hurley, what’s wrong?”, she repeated, her friend’s behavior making her anxious.
> 
> “Dude…” he whispered, his voice shaking. Hurley lifted his eyes from the list in his hands, pressing it into hers. 
> 
> “One of us isn’t on the manifest”
> 
> Dun, dun, duuuuun.  
> Hope you stick around ;D  
> -B.


	7. Discoveries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. First of all, sorry for only updating after like, a week. I wasa bit busy and the next chepter took me forever but here I am.  
> Hope you like it, please be so kind and leave a review~  
> Thanks for reading  
> -B.

It’s been two days since Sayid left.

After having accidently stabbed Sawyer while torturing him for Shannon’s inhalers, which, as it turned out, Sawyer didn’t even have in the first place, he’d been to ashamed and scared of himself to stay and had wandered off. According to Kate who’d been the last person he’d talked to before leaving, he claimed to go away for a certain amount of time and walk down the beach to get a sense of the island. Roxy doubted he’d return though.

The survivors had made themselves at home in the valley, with more and more people moving from the beach. Roxy had found herself a nice little cave that she was sharing with Hurley. They got along pretty well and it was nice to have somebody to talk to when most people had already turned in for the night, so they’d decided to share.

Locke had once again returned to the camp with a freshly hunted boar, which he was serving by the fire. Her “roommate” hat volunteered to go to fetch them some dinner. In the meanwhile Roxy had been going through some backpacks Locke had found in the jungle and dropped off near her cave, in hopes of finding something useful. She’d read the few books she’d bought with herself already and since her own backpack with her diary and sketchbook was still in Sawyer’s possession, she wished to find something to entertain herself with.

“Here’s dinner, dude”

Roxy looked up from the contents of the backpack she’d been inspecting to see Hurley walk towards her with two trays of boar meat and some fruit.  
“Thanks” she smiled as she took the offered tray.

“Don’t mention it, dude,” Hurley waved it off as he sat down on his own makeshift bed across from hers. “Found anything useful?”, he asked, nodding towards the emptied backpacks.

“Not really,” she answered as she nibbled on a slice of mango, “Only some pens and shirts. But there’s not much you can do with a pen if you don’t have anything to write in”

Oh, how much she wished to have her sketchbook. She’d spent the last two days doing nothing but sitting around, bored out of her mind with nothing to do.

At that Hurley perked up, putting the tray with his half-eaten dinner besides himself as he looked around for his suitcase.

“I found a notebook, yesterday. Wanna have it? I have no use for it”

Roxy looked up sharply, a warm feeling spreading in her chest as she watched Hurley pull a notebook from his suitcase.

“What, really? Are you serious?” she basically squealed.

“Yeah sure, dude. I wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway”, he said as he tossed it to her.

“Thank you so much, Hurley.” She grinned as she inspected the notebook. I was empty, the first few pages had been ripped out but beside that, unused. The pages were blank and thicker than a normal notebook’s. It was a sketch book.

“So, what are you gonna do with it? Start a diary? Write a book?”

“Nah. It’s a sketchbook. I’m gonna draw into it”

“You can draw? Like people and stuff?” asked Hurley as he chewed on some boar.

“Yeah. People and stuff”, she laughed around a mouthful of meat. “I can draw you if you’d like to? Wanna be on the first page?” she offered.

Hurley opened his mouth to answer but two bags being dropped to the ground next the them interrupted him. Roxy startled, glancing up to see Ethan and Locke standing in front of their camp.

“Hi”, greeted Ethan, oddly still.

Hurley peered up at him, unsurely, before glancing at the bags: “Yo, what’s this?”

“These were in the jungle. Must have fallen off the plane”, explained Locke, dropping a third one as Roxy and Hurley abandoned their dinner and conversation to stand.

“What were you guys doing out in the jungle at night?”, wondered Hurley, glancing at the two suspiciously.

“Best time to hunt”, was Ethan’s answer.

“You part of the hunting club now?” joked Roxy.

“Ethan here got some experience”, explained Locke. “Spotted tracks. We think it might be rabbit or some other rodent.”

“Rodent. Yum.”

“Figured people are starting to get tired of eating boar meat” said Ethan, noticing Hurley’s enthusiasm. Raising his eyebrows, he added: “Variety is the spice of life”

“Dude, you got that right. Okay, We’ll check out the bags. See if there’s anything useful we can, y’know, use. Thanks.” Hurley grabbed two suitcases and started going through them. Roxy followed suit and grabbed the third one.

From one of the suitcases Hurley pulled a impossibly ugly Hawaiian shirt, tossing it aside with a laugh. Roxy’s suitcase had similar contents, only clothes and a bottle of sunscreen.

“Dude, look at this!”

Glancing over at her friend, she saw him hold open a long vinyl bag with a huge grin on his face. Roxy leaned over to peer inside it, her own grin forming as her eyes fell upon the contents. Glancing back at Hurley, they grinned at each other, the same idea already forming in their heads.

…

The golf course Hurley and Roxy had built had been a big success. I didn’t take long to dig a few holes and put up a few masts and shirts as flags, to be frank, the most difficult thing about the whole thing was trying to talk the other survivors into giving it a chance. Most people had been wary at first, not really getting the point Hurley and Roxy had tried to make. But after their unofficial leader Jack had carved in an given it a chance, others had joined to. It hadn’t taken long until even more people joined, everyone glad to be finally doing something fun. Even Sawyer had joined them at one point, betting sunscreen and flashlights against the doctor. Roxy herself hadn’t joined in, watching the others play had made her feel more relaxed and content than she’d been since the crash. They had spent the rest of the afternoon golfing, only stopping when the sun has fully set and it was too dark outside to keep playing. Only a handful of people had remained until the end of the “Island Open”, the rest had left one by one as the afternoon went by, but from the carefree smiles and the relaxed postures, Roxy that afternoon hadn’t been a waste of time.

But Roxy should’ve known they’d never be able to catch a break on the island. Roxy had stayed up longer than she usually did, not very sleepy after having spent such a relaxing afternoon. She’d decided to make use of her new sketchbook and had made some rough sketched of the valley with the pens she had found previously. Ink has never been her preferred medium, but the sketches had turned out better than she’d thought they would. It had felt nice to finally be able to draw again. After finishing the third drawing – a rough sketch of the cave Roxy and Hurley called their own – she’d gone to sleep as well, already preparing to ask some people if she could draw them the next day.

The last thing she would have thought she’d be woken by were screams.

Roxy couldn’t have been asleep for more than a couple of hours before the screams had disturbed the night, as it was still very dark as she scrambled to her feet to rush behind Hurley, only to find a what appeared to be a sleepwalking Claire, screaming as if her life depended on it in the middle of the valley. Charlie had already appeared by her side and grabbed her by the shoulders to try to calm her, only to be attacked by the pregnant woman, who appeared to be scared out of her mind. It had taken Charlie a few tries to calm down Claire. She had finally zeroed in on Charlie, blinking and looking around in confusion and fear before her eyed dropped towards her own hands.

Roxy shuddered, the hair on her body standing on edge as her own eyes fell upon Claire’s hands.

They were covered in blood.

…

Jack and Charlie had eventually calmed Claire down enough to walk her to the cave Jack had set up as an infirmary, telling the others to go back to sleep while they minded to her injuries. Roxy knew they didn’t want Claire to feel intimidated by all the attention, so she’d backed off and made her way back to her shared cave, knowing there was no way she’d be able to fall asleep with Claire’s terrified screams still echoing in her mind.

She’d spent the following day at the beach. The valley was nice but Roxy needed a little change of scenery and the beach was a perfect place for that. She’d taken her sketchbook with her, planning to make a few drawings of the beach while she was there. The better part of the day had been spent at the beach, sketching everything and anything. She’d eventually wandered back to the valley, snacking on a banana on her way.

She’d been about to walk through the narrow corridor leading into the valley as her ears picked up some unusual sounds coming from behind the valley. She’d nearly ignored them, but her curiosity had taken over her and she didn’t have anything better to do anyway.

She eventually found Locke and Walt practicing throwing knives. Well, Walt was practicing, Locke looked like he knew what he was doing, as he instructed Walt.  
The boy appeared to be struggling. A leaf had been been secured onto a tree with a thin knife, probably by Locke, and Walt was using it as a bull’s eye. And while he did manage to wedge the knives he threw into the tree more often than not, he always missed the leaf by quite a bit.

“Can I join?”, she interrupted after watching Walt miss the leaf one more time.

The guys looked up and turned towards her, surprised by her sudden appearance as they haven’t heard her approach.

Locke nodded, even offering her a small smile as he approached her.

“Ever tried before?”

Roxy shook her head, “Nope, so please don’t laugh if I suck”

Locke laughed, shaking his own head as he handed her a big knife. I was about the size of her forearm and extremely sharp.

“You’ll get the hang of it”

The older man quickly instructed her how to do it, walking her through the basics and demonstrating. He, of course, hit the leaf, and after exchanging it for a new one – a bigger one, Roxy couldn’t help but notice – he let her have a go.

Running Locke’s instructions threw her mind again, she positioned herself in front of the tree the way she’d been told to and glanced at Locke one last time to make sure she wasn’t making any mistakes. He nodded while Walt, who had sat down on a boulder and was munching on a banana while he took a break, gave her a thumbs up.

Taking in a big breath, Roxy focused on the leaf and threw the knife.

To her utter surprise, she hit the leaf.

Her jaw hit the ground. What.

“Woah!” cried Walt, amazed by what he had seen.

Locke himself was also surprised, his eyebrows lifted, as he walked over to the tree to take out the thrown object.

“You sure this was your first time?”, he asked as he glanced back at her somewhat proudly.

“I swear, I’ve never done this before” Roxy watched Locke attach another leaf to the tree, this time, a smaller one. “Beginner’s luck maybe?”

“Maybe” replied Locke, though by the way his was trying not to frown, Roxy could tell he didn’t believe that, “Try it again”

Roxy did, suddenly nervous even though she had no reason to be.

And just like before, she watched the knife hit the leaf as the thrown object wedged itself into the tree.

Roxy couldn’t help but grin as she glanced at Locke, only to find him frowning at her.

“What?” I swear I’ve never done this before!”

Locke nodded while he walked over to the tree once again to remove the knife, “I know”. Approaching her, he handed her the knife, a weird look still present on his face, “ It’s the island”, he whispered quietly as she took the offered item once again.

Roxy shot him a questioning look as he walked towards Walt’s boulder to sit down next to the boy, gesturing at Roxy to go again with a wave of his arm.

She threw and hit, just like before.

Huh.

…  
She’d stayed with Locke for the rest of the day. Walt had gone back to the valley, but not before asking her not to tell his dad that he’d been practicing with Locke. Roxy had promised him she wouldn’t, she trusted Locke enough to know he wouldn’t let the child get hurt.

After the camp’s youngest had left, Locke had requested her to throw again and again, in different scenarios and from different distances. Roxy hadn’t missed once. At one point he even asked her to throw with her non dominant arm, a request Roxy had first hesitated at. She couldn’t even use a spoon properly with her left arm, how should she throw a knife into a tree and hit what she was supposed to hit?

She hadn’t missed though.

“Remarkable” exclaimed Locke excitedly.

“This is impossible!”, protested Roxy, not believing what she’d seen herself do.

“But yet it is” was Locke’s answer. He paused, as if debating whether he should say something but eventually he added: “This island… it’s special.”

“What do you mean by that?” frowned Roxy. Was he trying to say the island has given her the gift of always hitting the bull’s eye?

Locke ignored her question, telling her to throw the knife once again with her left hand, from a bigger distance that time. She didn’t miss.

…

That night Claire’s screams have pierced through the dark once again. But she wasn’t just screaming, no it was worse. She was screaming for help. Somebody had attacked her.

Roxy had been on her feet before she fully joined the land of the awake, already running towards Claire’s sleeping place in a hurry. Jack had already arrived to the scene, just like Charlie who was by Claire’s side, a protective arm around her as he shouted in panic:

“Someone attacked her!”

Roxy froze as she walked over to the pregnant woman and stood on her other side.

“What happened?!”

“They- they held me down!”

“How long-“

“Which way did-“

“Who was-“

Claire, still shaken from what had happened and overwhelmed from everyone’s overlapping questions, tried to answer, was still hysterical. Roxy tried to comfort her by mirroring Charlie and putting an arm around her, stroking her hand up and down her back in what she hoped was a soothing manner.

“They… they held me down-“

“Which way did they go?”, demanded Jack, his fists clenched and his eyes wide open with anger.

“..I.. don’t know, I didn’t… he ran… I think”

The valley’s other inhabitants started to arrive to the scene, everyone wanting to know what was going on. It was the second time Claire’s screams have disturbed the night, it couldn’t be a coincidence.

“How long-?”, started Jack, fixated on hunting down the person who laid a finger on her.

“Just now, he just-“

“What’s going on?”, interrupted Hurley, not having caught much of the conversation.

“We should fan out, “ commanded Charlie, leaving Claire’s side, “Search the area around the caves. He can’t have gotten far.” With that he practically ordered Hurley and two others to join him in rushing off through one of the caves, every fiber of the brit’s body shaking in anger, fully determined on finding the person who had hurt Claire and hold them responsible for their actions.

They rushed off, leaving a very panicked Claire behind. Roxy could feel the way her body shook, no, it basically trembled with fear. Roxy shot Jack a panicked look as she realized Claire was hyperventilating.

“C’mon, let’s sit down. Okay?”, whispered Jack, as he searched for Claire’s eyes. Putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, he turned to Ethan, who had lingered close by.

“Can you get her some water, man?”

He nodded, walking off to do just as he was asked.

“Okay, you’re safe, Claire. Try to calm down…”

Claire tried to, but her body was still tense after what had happened, her small frame still shaking.

“Did you get a look at him at all?”, inquired Michael, after a few moments, the tone of his voice softer and less demanding.

“It was dark, I didn’t see-“

“Where did this happen?”, wanted Jack to know.

“Here,”, she said, glancing behind herself towards her makeshift bed, “I was sleeping and woke up and he was…” she stopped petrified, “He was trying to hurt my baby”

Unseen to Claire, Roxy exchanged a look with Jack and Michael.

“It’s okay, Claire, you’re safe now. Nobody will hurt you or your baby”, she whispered, hoping to reassure her somehow. Claire didn’t seem to hear her as she kept going.

“He had a … thing… it was. I don’t know, … a needle I think? He was, he was doing something.” With that she pulled up her shirt, showing them her pregnant belly. It was completely unmarked however.

“He was trying to hurt my baby”, she repeated, softer this time.

Roxy glanced back at the men again, only to see doubt on Jack’s face.

…

The others had returned about ten minutes later, Charlie immediately rushing back to Claire’s side. Seeing Hurley updating Jack about what they’d found, or rather not found, she gave Claire’s hand a small squeeze before leaving to join Hurley and the doctor at one of the torches.

“Nobody saw or heard anything?”, she caught Jack saying as she reached them.

Hurley shook his head, “Everyone was asleep. Nada.”

“What do we do now?”, she asked, glancing back at a still terrified Claire.

Jack shrugged, but Hurley seemed to have come up with something.

“So I had an idea. I’m out there looking for a psycho with Scott and Steve right... and I’m realizing... who the hell are Scott and Steve?”

Roxy frowned. What the hell was he talking about?

“I’m not following you…” said Jack, as confused as Roxy.

“If I were a cop and some woman got attacked, we’d canvas, right? Find a witness, know on doors?” waiting for the two to nod, he continued, “But we don’t have any doors.”

“What do doors have to do with-“, started Roxy, still not getting her friend’s point.

“We don’t know who’s living here and who’s still at the beach. We don’t know each other”, he eventually said. Ah, now Roxy finally got the point he was trying to make.

“My name isn’t Hurley, it’s Hugo Reyes. Hurley’s a nickname. Why? I’m not telling you- but what I’m saying is, we need to start finding out who everyone is.” He pointed out.

Yeah, that makes sense.

“You want to start a census?”, asked Jack, now also starting to get Hurley’s idea.

“Yeah, like a registry. Names. What people look like. Who’s related to who. We lay down the law, maybe everyone won’t go around attacking each other. I mean - c’mon --It feels like someone’s getting punched or stabbed or something every other day, man.” He joked, before getting serious again,” We gotta find who did this to her”

Jack and Roxy nodded. Sounds like a plan.

…

Hurley had hunted down some paper while Roxy quickly checked in on Claire. While still shaken and afraid, she appeared to have calmed down a little bit as she sat around the campfire with a protective Charlie.

The sun had started to rise by the time Hurley and Roxy finished with making a list of questions to ask everybody.  
“Let’s start here”, proposed Roxy “And then go to the beach”

So they did. The valley people had already heard about Hurley’s plan and they’d all cooperated smoothly, allowing the duo to finish writing everyone’s names and information down in less than half an hour. They walked down to the beach after finishing, grabbing some bananas from a tree on the ways for breakfast. Most survivors at the beach had already gotten wind of the attack on Claire and answered the questions honestly and helpfully. Some people on the other hand, were more hesitant, no understanding why they were bombarded with all these questions out of a sudden.

Hurley had volunteered to be the one to ask the questions while Roxy stood by and noted down the responses. Their system seemed to work well as they were done with most of the beach’s inhabitants in a short time. After finishing with Locke, who started to appear weirder and weirder to Roxy as she got to know him better, they caught sight of Ethan collecting coconuts.

“Hey, Lance!”, shouted Hurley jogging over to where Ethan was standing.

Lance? Who the fuck is Lance?

“Sorry?”, asked Ethan, lifting his eyebrows in confusion.

“You’re name’s Lance, right?”

Roxy chuckled. “Hurley, we’ve been here for two weeks now!”

“I’m Ethan”

“Dude, that’s right! Lance is the little skinny guy. With the glasses and the red hair.” ,remembered Hurley.

“I can see how you’d get us confused”, joked Ethan got natured, looking nothing like the person Hurley had described.

“Sorry, too many names and faces. Pretty pathetic -- I mean, you’d think after a couple of weeks on an island with the same people we’d all know each other...”, explained Hurley.

“Yes, you would think that”

“So, uh, we’re doing a list, you know, of survivors. Name, home address, like that.”, continued Hurley.

“Well, you already have my name”

“Nor Lance”

“Definitely not”

“Last name?”

“Rom”

“Rom? R-O-M?”, asked Roxy, wanting to make sure she got it right.

“That’s right”

“Great. Where you from, Ethan Rom?”

“Ontario, Canada”

“Right on. Love Canada. Great…”, Roxy glanced at Hurley, amused by his awkwardness. “uh… weather”, he finished. Roxy chuckled once again.

“Well, that’s enough. Thanks Ethan”, Roxy jumped in.

They were about to walk off when Ethan suddenly asked. “Hey, guys, what’s this for?”

Roxy looked up at Ethan’s face after he asked the question. He looked like he was just curious, but something in his eyes made Roxy feel like he was… nervous? Roxy shrugged it off. He seemed to be a very private person, maybe he just didn’t like talking about himself.

“Nothing, man. Just thought it’d be a good idea”, explained Hurley.

They’d found Boone and Shannon after leaving Ethan. They were in the mids of packing their bags.

“You want my information?, asked Shannon after Hurley started questioning them,”Name. Shannon Rutherford. Age. Twenty. Address. Crap Hole Island”

“So where were you guys last night?”, asked Hurley, after Roxy noted down everything.

“Uh... the beach?”

Boone looked at Hurley, suspiciously.

“What’s up with the interrogation?”

“Y’know, you’re like the twentieth person to ask me that today. Why’s everyone so uptight about answering a few questions?”, wondered Hurley, tired of having to repeat the same explanation over and over again.

“Maybe we’re not cool with you starting up your own little Patriot Act, man.”

“He’s a liberal.”, added Shannon, rolling her eyes.

Boone ignored her, focusing on Hurley once again. “So why the list?”

“It’s nothing, really. We had an incident at the valley last night…”

“Incident?”

“Claire?”, started Hurley, “the pregnant girl? Ya know her? She kinda go, uh… attacked a little?” admitted Hurley.

“What-?!”

“Is she okay?” wanted Boone to know.

“Yeah. She’s a little shook up, but-“, started Roxy, before being interrupted by Shannon, who abruptly stopped packing and threw her stuff on the ground passive agressivly.

“I am so not moving to the rape caves”

Boone stared at the list in Roxy’s hands for a moment, lost in thought, before something dawned on him.

“Hey, y’know, your life would be much easier if you just had the manifest. We crossed off the names of the dead after we buried the fuselage… so it should be a full roster of the rest of us.”

Roxy looked up, eyes wide. That really would make everything much easier.

“What?”, squealed Hurley, ”You serious? Who has it?”

Boone tilted his head and raised his eyebrow. That look alone answered the question for Roxy. Oh boy…

“Who do you think?”

Roxy sighed, looking behind Boone towards what used to be the medical tent. How the hell are they supposed to convince Sawyer to give them the manifest?

Don’t worry dude, I’ve got this”, said Hurley, before walking off, leaving her alone with the siblings.

…

Roxy didn’t know what he’d said to Sawyer to give him the manifest, but Hurley had managed to convince him somehow. He’d jogged back to Roxy with a big grin on his face and the manifest in his hands, so Roxy had deduced he just worked his Hurley magic and didn’t bother asking what he’d said to Sawyer.

They’d sat down on a random cut down tree as they went over the manifest.

“I’ll read the names from my list-“ started Roxy, lifting the list they’d spent writing until then and waved it, “and you check it off on yours”, with that, she tapped the manifest in Hurley’s hands. Giving him her pen, she watched as he quickly checked off Boone and Shannon and themselves, before looking at her, waiting for her to begin.

She dictated the names one by one, watching Hurley check them off, before reading the next name. Roxy hadn’t counted the number of people they’d talked to, but she was pretty sure they nearly got all of them, the list they’d made seemed long enough for that.

“Scott Jackson… Steve Jenkins …”, she read, waiting for Hurley to find the names on the manifest before glancing back down at her list. Only two more names left. 

“John Locke… Ethan Rom”.

She put the list aside and waited for Hurley to finish while she looked out at the ocean. It was a nice day.

“Did we get them all? How many are still missing?”

Silence. She turned her head as he didn’t answer.

“Hurley?”

A frown was set on his face, his eyes glancing up and down the manifest with what looked like bisbelief and pure terror.

“Hurley, what’s wrong?”, she repeated, her friend’s behavior making her anxious.

“Dude…” he whispered, his voice shaking. Hurley lifted his eyes from the list in his hands, pressing it into hers. “One of us isn’t on the manifest”, he whispered terrified.

Roxy’s head whipped towards the manifest. Every name was checked off, even Sayid’s, who still haven’t returned from his journey of shame.

“Who?” she asked, fear spreading in her chest as her eyes flew over the manifest. Her hands were shaking as Hurley replied, his own fear present in his voice.

“Ethan”


	8. Showdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello~~  
> Yes, it is I, back with another chapter so soon.   
> Thank so so much for the comments and the kudos, you have no idea how much they mean to me.   
> We are slowly getting closer to Season 2, which obviously, is awesome cuz that's when our favourite punching bag will be introduced, so yeah, awesome.  
> Tbh, when I first made up my mind about writing this, I didn't think it would get so long but I have already written 33k words and I can tell this is gonna be a veeeeery long fanfiction.   
> Hope you guys don't mind, lmao.  
> -B.

Ethan had kidnapped Claire and nearly killed Charlie.

Hurley and Roxy had practically bolted back to the caves after their sudden revelation, only to find Sayid back, hurt, exhausted and barely conscious, while muttering something about not being alone on the island. He claimed he had found the French woman, which explained his leg injury, and was told there were others on the island.

Search teams have left soon after, everyone desperate to find their kidnapped friends. Roxy herself had gone with Michael’s team. While terrified, she’d wanted to help and the fact that she was armed with one of Locke’s big hunting knives had calmed her nerves a little. But only a little. 

They hadn’t found anything though. No wonder, the two trackers had gone off in the different direction, so it really hadn’t been a big surprise that they came back without having found anything.

Empty handed, Roxy’s team had eventually wandered back to the beach, only to find Jack sitting with Charlie. At first Roxy had thought Jack’s search team had managed to find the place Ethan had kidnapped Claire and Charlie to and she started feeling relieved. That emotion was rather short lived however, as Roxy noticed the ugly bruises around the brit’s neck. That’s when she had found out what had happened.

The castaways’ mood had changed gravely after everyone had gotten wind about Claire’s kidnapping. Nearly three third of all survivors had lived in the valley before the incident had happened, but by the time the Claire had been kidnapped for three days, half of those people have decided to move back to the beach, too afraid to be in the jungle.

Roxy had stayed in the valley but she’d lie if she said she hadn’t given moving back to the beach a thought. Not letting herself be intimidated, she had remained in the caves, but had started making a camp for herself at the beach as well, as she’s taken to spend most of her day at the beach. 

The tide shifting as suddenly as it had, hadn’t been something any of them had accounted for. Nearly a week after having found out Ethan wasn’t on the manifest, the survivors had to gather what belongings they had to move up the coast, the water had started to rise too quickly, already covering half of the fuselage. 

Jack had of course tried to make use of the tide and began to talk people into moving into the valley, claiming it would be much safer, but he didn’t have much success with that. People were too wary of entering the jungle after what had happened. Even Roxy, who had been Team Valley from the beginning, had started finding herself preferring the beach instead, she had been feeling way too trapped in the valley and the endless ocean had a calming effect. She felt much safer and freer at the beach.

“Roxy!”

She looked up from the piece of plane wreckage she’d been trying to drag further up the coast to save it from going under with the fuselage, only to see Locke making his way towards her with a determined look on his face. 

Locke and Boone had spent the previous five days looking for Claire in the jungle, leaving at the first ray of sunshine and coming back when the sun had already set, which made seeing Locke strolling down the beach towards herself a somewhat unusual sight.

“Yeah?”, she asked, dropping the plane wreckage for a moment, as she straightened herself.

Waiting until he was standing right before her – a little bit too close to comfort, Roxy couldn’t help but notice – the older man looked around in a subtle way before basically murmuring the following:

“I’d like you to come with me. Boone and I need your help”

Raising her eyebrows, she looked at him in confusion. What would make him come to her for help? It’s not like she had any special survivor skills to offer. 

“Me?”

Locke nodded. Judging by his facial expression and body language, he wouldn’t accept a “no” from her. Roxy, already knowing she doesn’t really have a choice, he’ll probably bother her until she’d agree, decided to try anyways. If he wanted her help. She’ll want to know with what exactly.

“With what?”

“I can’t tell you”, he admitted, his eyes darting around once again. After making sure the coast was clear and nobody was in hearing distance, he continued. 

“You’ll understand when you see it”

It?

That had sparked Roxy’s interest. Something made Roxy think that he didn’t just want to show off his knife collection to her, whatever he was talking about seemed to be important. A sudden thought entered her mind. Had they found something in the jungle? 

“You sure I’m the person who can help you? Why not Jack, or Say-“

“No. Only you can help”

Tilting her head, she locked eyes with the bald man, searching for answers in his orbs. His poker face however, didn’t tell her anything. She shrugged and dropped the plane piece she’d been trying to carry up the beach. 

“Lead the way”

The way, as it turned out, lead deep into the jungle. While walking even deeper and deeper into the jungle, Roxy had tried to squeeze some answers out of Locke but he’d remained secretively, only offering her the occasional “You’ll see” when he felt like it.

Eventually they seemed to have arrived where Locke wanted to take her to, as he stopped, causing Roxy, who had zoomed out after realizing she wouldn’t get any answers from Locke before they arrived to the mysterious “it” he’d found, to nearly collide with his back. 

Holding up a hand, he gestured at her to wait as he called out for Boone. 

Glancing around the place, Roxy tried to find something that was worth dragging her into the jungle for, but she only saw trees and bushes, no matter where she looked.

“I thought you said we’re keeping this a secret?!” shouted Boone very displeased as he emerged from behind one of the trees.

Wow, that guy really knows how to make someone feel welcome.

“She can help us, Boone”

With that, Locke took off towards the line of trees Boone had been hiding behind, trusting Roxy to follow him.

“Help you with what?”, she asked uncertainly, as she followed him and stepped beside him. Locke came to a sudden halt and turned to face her, before gesturing towards something behind him.

And that’s when she saw it. 

At first, Roxy thought it was just a wreckage from the plane, but she quickly realized the metallic thing she was inspecting was indeed not from the plane, but a part of something larger. It seemed to be stuck in the ground, the edges of the thing barely visible through the dugged up soil. 

She fell to her knees and touched it, sweeping away some earth from the polished metallic thing while she inspected it. 

So this is what Boone and Locke had been doing these past days, she thought as she took note of the traces that must have been left behind while digging around it.  
“What is this?”

“No idea”

She glanced up at the two, and then glanced back towards the metallic thing. 

“Do you feel anything?”, inquired Locke, in the weird tone he’d used while watching her throw knives.

“You mean besides confusion?”

Boone rolled his eyes and faced Locke.

“You said we have to keep this a secret.”, at Boone’s words, Roxy glanced up once again and furrowed her brows, “You said we can’t tell anybody. Why did you bring her here?

“Because she is special”

Now that had not been the answer Roxy had thought she would hear. 

“Excuse me?”, she questioned, not believing what she had heard. With wide open eyes she waited for Locke to explain.

“The island has given her a gift”

Roxy’s jaw dropped. What the fuck was he talking about? 

“What? Is this supposed to be a joke?”

Looking between the two men, she saw Boone staring at Locke with an equally baffled look on his face as she did. 

“Look, Locke”, she began as she stood up. Whatever he was doing, whatever they were doing, she wanted no part in it, “This has been lovely and all, but you’re not making any sense and this is freaking me out. I’m going back to the camp”

With that she turned towards the direction they’d come from, hoping she’d find the way back somehow. 

“No, you can’t go”, stated Locke. 

Roxy stopped mid step. Now this is getting more than just ridiculous.

She spun around, determined to tell Locke to go to hell but fell silent as she watched him pull a long knife out of his pocket.  
For a second, she feared he’d threaten her, but instead of doing that, he flipped it and held it out for her to take. 

“This island isn’t a regular island”, he started as she reached for the knife, still confused and frustrated, “Haven’t you noticed anything unusual since we’ve been here, Roxy?”, he asked rhetorically, nodding towards the knife she was holding. 

Was he referring to her newly discovered knife throw skills? What did that have to do with anything?!

“Whatever that thing is, we-“ at that he nodded towards Boone “-have found it for a reason. The island has brought us here, Roxy. Now it wants us to find out what it is.”

…

Roxy had, albeit relucent, agreed to help Locke with whatever he planned to do with the thing he’s found. They planned to dig it out and find a way to open it, but as the days passed, they’ve come to find it harder and harder to lie to the rest of the survivors about what they’ve been doing in the jungle the whole day, especially since they didn’t have the time to go hunting while they were digging up the thing. 

And that’s where they needed Roxy’s help. Locke’s plan was to go hunting while Boone and herself do the dirty work and spend their day digging. While not being a big fan of the idea of spending all day in the middle of the jungle to dig up something strange, Roxy had agreed to help, but only because she was nice like that. And to be honest? She didn’t really have anything better to do on the island anyways. 

So every day, at the first ray of sunshine the three of them would disappear into the jungle and work their asses off, trying to dig up … whatever it was that they were trying to dig up.

Hurley had asked Roxy one night while they were mango hunting around the valley, where she was disappearing to the whole day. Having already prepared for getting asked that question, she lied Locke was teaching her how to hunt. Her friend hadn’t believed her at first – he even laughed as if that was the most ridicoulous thing he’d ever heard in his life, which did hurt Roxy’s feelings a little – but Roxy had been quick to improvise and had pulled the hunting knife Locke had given her out of her bag and had thrown it into a tree. Hurley, the big nerd that he was, had found it awesome. 

It only took the trio a few more days to find out what exactly they trying to dig up. It was a hatch. About two meters across, rectangular, made of metal and buried deep in the jungle floor. If Roxy had to guess, she’d say it looked like it was made out of stainless steel. The hatch was slightly raised, had a heavy hinge on one side and thick rivelets all the way around it. There was a very thick, clouded steel-framed glass window. 

Unfortunately, there was no latch attached to it, no obvious way to open it.

Her arms and back were aching by the third day they’ve been trying to dig up the hatch, so she had been very glad when Locke had told her to take a day off. She’d agreed without asking any questions on his sudden offer. 

If life gives you lemons, you don’t ask why, you just accept them and be glad you now have lemons, as Roxy’s aunt used to say when she was still a child.

…

Nearly two weeks have passed since Locke, who by the way, had asked her to call him John, had shown her to the hatch. Most of their free time, as if they didn’t only have free time, was spent at the hatch, digging around it in hopes of somehow finding a way inside. But so far, they didn’t have any luck with that.  
The unknowing survivors have started to become very suspicious and wanted to know where they were disappearing to the whole day. Roxy was sure there were even rumours going around that they were sneaking off to ... well, to have some sexy time, which Roxy had first found hilarious, but as time passed, it slowly became a bit annoying. They were probably started by Sawyer. That git. As a result, they stopped going to the hatch as often as they did before, they even started to only go in pairs instead of all three at once. Not that Roxy was complaining, she was pretty happy about the fact that she didn’t have to spend all of her days digging through the mud. 

In the meanwhile, Michael had decided that he’d had enough of sitting around and started planning to build a raft. And going by the way the tempo he was building it, Roxy was certain he’d finish in one or two weeks. His preparations have been going pretty well, his experience in construction work had helped Michael prepare for building the raft. But of course, when something starts going well on this island, something horrible will have to happen as a result.

In that case, it had been Walt running off. Fortunately. Michael had found him with the help of John and together they had saved him from a polar bear. Roxy had expected Walt to be more shaken about the fact that he nearly died, but the boy seemed to care more about the fact that his dog has run off again. Roxy, who probably loved animals more than she loved humans, had volunteered with John and Boone to go into the jungle to find Vincent.

As always, John had already prepared for the search trip and made a dog whistle, which was supposed to help Vincent find them. Roxy had doubted it would work, but she had come to trust John and his survivor skills, no matter what kind of ridiculous crap he sometimes talked about. 

And that’s when they had found Claire. Disorientated, confused and looking pretty awfully, but alive. Their lost friend had pretty much collapsed in their arms as they rushed to her side. John had picked her up and carried her back to the valley as quickly as he dared to with her in his arms. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say people were very happy to hear their fellow pregnant castaway had returned.

She had regained consciousness soon after getting handed over into Jack’s care, only to start screaming and scrambling away after seeing them. Turn out she had some sort of amnesia, as she didn’t remember any of them or what had happened with her while she had been missing, which was rather unfortunate, but besides that, she appeared to be fine an to Roxy that was enough.  
Charlie had barely left Claire’s side since she had found her way back to them and tried to help her remember things but the last thing Claire remembered was sitting on the plane. 

Together with Jack, Sayid and John, they tried to come of with a logical explanation how Claire had come to lose her memories and how she had been able to escape from Ethan but every theory they were bale to come up with was more unbelievable than the other. The girl was about nine months pregnant, how could she have been able to escape Ethan? 

They didn’t have to ponder on that for a long time though. The next morning, Charlie had come running to the beach in panic while dragging an unconscious Jin behind him, claiming that Ethan had threatened him to hand Claire over. According to Charlie, Ethan had promised to kill a survivor each day until Claire is handed over to him. 

Together with Jack, John, Kate, Boone and Sayid, they had prepared their camp for the night. Trip wire signals were put up, fires were lit at 20-meter intervals and knives were sharpened in preparation. By the time the sun had set and the first shift had taken their place, Roxy actually felt somehow safe, but that didn’t mean she felt safe enough to fall asleep. Energized with fear and anxiety, she’d spent the whole night sitting against a tree at the beach, toying around with the hunting knife John had given her. 

The night had been peaceful and calm. Beside the occasional camper leaving their tent to relieve their bladder, nothing happened until the sun started to peak above the horizon. 

And that’s when Roxy heard one of the alarms being tripped off. 

Jumping to her feet, she charged towards the source. With racing heart, she neared the tripped off wire, only to find Sayid, John and Boone, who’d volunteered to be on sentry duty, do the same. But it was only Vincent.

“I think we found another missing castaway”, joked Sayid, as they all watch Vincent lick Boone’s face.

Roxy smiled, glad it hadn’t been Ethan after all, and crouched down to pet the returned dog, only to hear the scream of a woman pierce through the morning mid-stroke.

It had come from the beach. 

The four of them sprinted towards the place the scream had come from to find a beaten body in the sand. Roxy’s heart dropped into her pants as she kneeled next to the body to turn it over. It was Scott. 

“What happened?”, came from Boone.

“Is he alive?”, inquired Sayid, kneeling down next to Roxy, who only shook her head. Scott’s neck was clearly broken. 

She felt like throwing up.

“How did he get past us?”, asked Sayid the question all four of them had been wondering themselves. How did he?

They buried him before noon. It hadn’t taken long to dig up a grave and after burying him, they held a little funeral for their murdered camper. Hurley had even volunteered to give a little speech in spite of barely knowing Scott. 

Just a few hours later, Roxy found herself being asked to follow John to the valley. Apparently, he’d come up with a plan together with Jack.  
A plan, which consisted of using Claire as a bait.

“Are you insane?”, shouted Charlie before Jack was even able to finish telling the little group that had gathered around about his plan. Roxy herself kept her mouth shut as she went over Jack’s plan in her head. It made sense, using Claire as bait would be the only way to get Ethan where they wanted him to be, but it was very dangerous. Anything could go wrong. Not to mention the fact that they would’ve to ask Claire at first. Roxy doubted Claire would be very enthusiastic about the idea of being used as bait.

“It’s the best chance we have, Charlie!”

“No bloody way!”, protested Charlie, not buying Jack’s plan at all.

“If you want to capture Ethan, we have to ensnare him” interjected Sayid, “And the only way to do that is by giving him what he wants.”

Roxy nodded. That she could agree with.

“We have to ask Claire. We can’t just decide to use her as bait without her consent”, added Roxy, voicing her own opinion.

Jack, John and Sayid all agreed while Charlie of course, wouldn’t listen. 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about! This guy, he will kill all of you. You can’t protect her-“

“Charlie, I can talk for myself”, interrupted Claire, who had quietly entered the valley while they were discussing about the plan. Roxy turned to face the pregnant woman and tried to read her face on how much she’d overheard.

“Claire, they want to use you as bait”, began Charlie. Claire on the other hand, wouldn’t listen, she’d already made up her mind.

“I don’t remember Ethan. I don’t remember what he did to me….”, she paused, before continuing with a determined look on her face, “But if I can help stop him from hurting someone else, I have to do that.”

…

Sayid, Jack, John, Kate and Sawyer had armed themselves with the guns and after going over the plan once again, they took off into the jungle. Roxy had offered to join them as well, but Jack didn’t want anyone without a gun go with them. 

So together with Charlie, Roxy had watched the group leave and hoped she’d be able to witness them return safely. 

“C’mon Charlie. Let’s-“” she started as she turned towards the brit, who, a moment ago, had been standing right behind her, only to find him gone. She whipped her head around to look for him, but the valley was empty. 

Dammit! 

Checking her belt for the hunting knife to make sure it was still there, she took off through the jungle in the direction the group had gone off to. Charlie, the idiot, had without a doubt sneaked off and gone after them, not accepting getting left behind.

She sprinted through the jungle, in hopes of catching up with Charlie and making him come back with her. The rain had started to pour while she rushed between the trees and bushes, but she barely registered the wetness, as her ears picked up something that sounded like a fight from a distance. 

That must be them! She pulled the knife from her belt and held it out ready to throw it if needed as she ran even faster, only to come to a sudden halt as a gunshot ran out.


	9. Raft, numbers and farewell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I have returned once again with a new chapter. i hope you like it.  
> I have to admit that I'm not very happy with how this turned out, but I usually write between 12am and 2 am so don't judge me.  
> Thank you for your lovely comments and for the kudos! They mean the world to me!  
> -B.

It had been Charlie who’d shot Ethan, which sure sure hadn’t been part of the plan. Ethan was originally supposed to be captured and held hostage so they could find out who he really was and why he’d kidnapped Claire, killing him, wasn’t supposed to happen. 

Not that, that held back Charlie from shooting him in the chest six times. Six. Times.

Not really knowing what to do with his dead body but also not wanting to just leave him there in the middle of the jungle, they’d carried him back to their camp, where Charlie then buried him. If one would ask Roxy, she’d say Charlie was way too calm about what had happened, but then again, she had never taken another person’s life and didn’t know how she’d feel like after doing it. 

The week that had followed had been relatively uneventful. Michael had made great progress with his raft, which had lifted everyone’s spirits. The survivors had gotten used to the life on the island in the three weeks they’ve been there but everyone was eager to go back home. 

Well, that’s what she thought. But then someone had decided it would be a good idea to light the nearly finished raft on fire. To say Michael was devastated about all of his hard work being destroyed was an understatement. He’d furiously attacked Jin, claiming he’d been the one who’d set his raft in flames. Having spent the better part of the previous two-ish weeks digging out the hatch, Roxy had missed out on the reason why Michael had become so pissed with Jin over the course of their stay on the island. Together with Sawyer, who had earned himself a spot on Michael’s raft, they’d hunted down Jin and started beating him up at the beach.

Roxy had rushed to them the second she noticed them, but by the time she reached them, a small circle of spectators had already formed around them.   
Sawyer was holding back Jack while Michael delivered punch after punch at Jin’s face. The Korean man shouted and screamed, trying to communicate with them in Korean but he was speaking too fast for Roxy to make out what he was trying to say. 

And that’s when the plot twist of the month happened.

“Stop it! Leave him alone!”

Roxy’s jaw dropped to the floor in disbelief as her head whipped towards the beaten man’s wife. She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.

“He didn’t burn your raft”, exclaimed Sun, in fluent English.

Judging by the surprised and confused facial expressions of the rest of the spectators, nobody had seen that coming.

Had Sun understood everything they’d said the whole time? Why had she let Roxy embarrass herself with her broken Korean while she tried to have a nice conversation with them, if she was able to speak English? 

“You speak English?”, asked Charlie in disbelief.

“Didn’t see that coming”, muttered Hurley with raised eyebrows.

The leader of the castaways turned to Sun, “You understood us? All this time? Why didn’t you say anything?”

But Sun ignored everyone and faced Michael. 

“Your raft was already on fire when he arrived. He burned his hands trying to put it out”

“Then why did he run?”

Sun paused and turned to face her husband, who, judging by the look on his face, was just as surprised about his wife’s English skills as everyone else was. She translated the question but Jin didn’t reply, deciding to give his wife a hateful look instead.

Sun however, continued to protect her husband against Michael and Sawyer, claiming he hadn’t been the one who’d set the raft on fire, but the two angered men didn’t believe her. 

Thankfully, John had stepped in and ended the dispute with the theory that it had been Ethan’s people, who’d destroyed the raft, not one of them. 

…

Michael had, albeit redundantly, accepted his raft’s fate and started to build a new one. As a sign of peace, Jin had started to help him, even going as far as to spend nearly as much time working on the new raft as Michael himself.

Having become tired of spending her days at the hatch, Roxy had taken to give a helping hand with the raft instead. With the help of her poor Korean skills, she was even able to help Jin communicate with the others despite the fact that Jin didn’t seem to appreciate it very much and never directly asked for her help. 

Most of her days were spent on the beach but she still slept in her cave in the valley which she shared with her friend Hurley. Her friend, who was usually a very deep sleeper and would barely make any noise at night. She herself had always had problems with falling asleep and usually she’d get woken up by the slightest noise. A fact, which her room mate didn’t know, telling by the way he had tried to sneak out of their shared cave in the middle of a night without her noticing. Yet thanks to Roxy’s problems he of course hadn’t succeeded. Not being used to Hurley leaving the cave in the middle of the night, she’d sleepily reached around for her glasses and followed him. She jogged after him in silence, trying her best not to wake anyone else, until she finally caught up with her friend who was about to walk through one of the corridors leading into the jungle.

“Hurley? What are you doing?”, she hissed.

Based on the way he startled, Hurley had in fact not noticed he’d woken her.

“Nothing”

“It’s in the middle of the night”, frowned Roxy, crossing her arms. Hurley was a terrible liar. 

“I’m just… I have to use the bathroom?”

Roxy raised an eyebrow and started Hurley down. After registering he’d lost the staring contest and Roxy wouldn’t give up until she’d had the answers, he lowered his shoulders in defeat and sighed. 

“You won’t tell anyone?”, he whispered, glancing at her with puppy eyes. 

“I swear, I won’t”, she promised with a small encouraging smile, “Are you alright?”

Hurley glanced behind himself towards the jungle. 

“I’ll tell you on the way”

“On the way to where?”, she frowned.

“To the French woman… Rossa?”

“You mean Rousseau?”

Hurley glanced around sheepishly, “Yeah”

Something about the expression on her friend’s face told her, he won’t let himself be talked out of whatever he was planning to do and Roxy, who considered herself a nice and caring human being, couldn’t just let him wander off all by himself in his weirdly confused state so she did the only logical thing she could come up with at around 4 am.

“You know what, okay let’s go”

Fingering the eyer present hunter knife on her belt, she gestured for him to lead the way. She can’t just let her friend go all alone.

Hurley led her to the beach, following the usual route the castaways took when walking from the valley to the beach. The two of them remained silent while they walked, it was obvious to Roxy that something was bothering her friend very much and she wanted to give him a little time until she eventually pressed for answers.   
They strolled down the beach side by side, until the sun started to peek up from behind the horizon and Roxy couldn’t take the silence anymore.

“So, Hurley, wanna tell my what you’re so stressed about? Why do you wanna go to Rousseau?”

Her friend glanced at her before slinging his backpack over a shoulder and taking out two bananas. Handling one to her, he started to explain.

“I think the crash might have been my fault”

Roxy laughed. Now that’s just ridiculous. 

“Hey, don’t laugh dude! I’m serious!”, exclaimed Hurley, hurt by his friend’s reaction.

Roxy willed herself to stop grinning. Hurley was seriously bothered by something.

“Okay, well then tell me… Why is it your fault that the plane crashed?”

Hurley hesitated before responding and shot her a shy glance. 

“Before we came here a lot of bad stuff used to happen whenever I was around”

Pitying him for feeling guilty about something that was clearly not his fault she inquired sincerely. “What do you mean? Like, bad luck?”

“No, … well, yeah, that’s… that would be kind of a mellow way of describing it”

With her not occupied hand, she gestured for him to elaborate. Maybe he just needed someone to share his burdens with? 

“Back home, …”, he hesitated. Roxy offered him a small and encouraging smile to urge him to continue. “… Back home, I’m worth 156 million dollars”

Roxy stopped in her tracks. What the fuck?

“Is this a joke? Are you pranking me right now or something?”, she glanced around as if expecting for someone to jump out of the bushed and laugh at her, but just a peek at Hurley’s very much not joking face, dismissed that idea.

“I’m serious, dude”

Being the CEO of a very successful bookseller company, Roxy wasn’t exactly piss poor herself. But damn, that’s a lot of money.

“Hurley… what did you do to have that much money?!”

And then Hurley told her the whole story. He told her about his win in the lottery, about every single bad thing that happened around him after his big win and about his suspicions of the numbers being cursed or something. Turns out, the reason he’d been in Sydney, was to find out where the numbers had come from. He blamed himself for the plane crash and after seeing the numbers on Rousseau’s maps, he’d taken it upon himself to find the French woman and to ask her what those numbers mean. 

Roxy had to admit that the whole thing was rather spooky. She wasn’t religious, so she never believed in fate or destiny or stuff like that, but she had to agree with Hurley that she also thought every bad thing that happened around Hurley since his big win couldn’t just be pure coincidence. 

By the time Hurley had finished telling her everything, hours had passed and Roxy didn’t know what to say. The fact that Hurley had won such a big sum of money in the lottery was suprising enough, but everything else was just the cherry on top. And now those numbers had appeared to him once again. 

Thinking about everything he had told her, Roxy had to admit that she herself was curious to know why Rousseau had scribbled them all over her papers. 

“Hey, do you think-“ she eventually began, but her face coming in contact with the sand interrupted the question she had been about to ask.

“Dude, you found it!”, exclaimed Hurley, not caring at all that she had fallen face down to the ground.

“Found what?”, groaned Roxy as she pushed herself up. Glancing around, her eyes fell on a thick cable which ran through the sand. Her foot must have gotten caught in it while they walked.

“Sayid told me he found the French chick while following a cable. I think this is what had been talking about”, he explained as he crouched down to inspect it.   
“Well, I’m glad to assist”, deadpanned Roxy, wiping the sand off of her clothes as she stood up.

“Yo! French chick!”, shouted Hurley as he picked up the cable and started following it into the jungle. 

Roxy signed before following her friend. This will certainly not end well.

…

It had actually ended well. Kinda. 

Hurley had managed to step on a trigger for one of Rousseau’s traps right as Sayid and Jack caught up with them. Turns out, Hurley wasn’t very good at sneaking around and he’d asked one too many suspicious questions. After noticing they were gone, Sayid had deduced he wanted to pay a visit to Rousseau out of unknown reasons. 

Anyways, Hurley had been successful in evading a what would have been a very painful death and they’d continued looking for the French woman, only to find an old and broken down bridge spanning a grudge. Her friend really seemed to have misplaced his common sense that day, as he started walking across said bridge without even a second thought. 

Roxy had been quick to follow, only for the bridge to start collapsing while she was mid way. Fortunately, she had been able to run to the other side, but it had been a very close call.

Rousseau on the other hand, had not been a big fan of people following her, and had started shooting at her and Hurley, which resulted in her getting a little lost in the jungle. 

But in the end, Jack and Sayid hat found her and together they went to search for Hurley, fearing for the worst. However, Hurley found them instead, claiming to have met Rousseau and having gotten all the answers he needed. 

…

The following night, Boone died.

Roxy had been spending a lazy day at the beach and in the valley, hanging around with Claire and Hurley and filling her sketchbook with sketches. The only productive thing she’d done the whole day was help Jack gather together every single pair of glasses they’d found in the unclaimed baggage, to find one for Sawyer.  
In the evening she’d wandered back to the valley only to find it in utter chaos. 

People were running around in panic, while a small crowd had gathered in the cave Jack had set up as an infirmary. She immediately ran over to the cave to find out what happened and found a bloodied Boone being surrounded by Jack, Kate and Sun.

The hours that had followed passed by in a blur. As much as she felt like throwing up at the sight of all the blood, she followed Jack’s orders and tried to assist him in every way she could. 

Boone had been mostly unconscious during the whole thing, knocked out by the pain, but thankfully he was able to tell them his blood type, which lead to Jack giving him a blood transfusion. 

“Boone? Boone, can you hear me?”, she whispered as she shuffled closer to him while Jack looked up from where he’d been inspecting Boone’s leg.

“My leg, it hurts”

“Don’t try moving. Can you breath okay?”, asked Jack worried.

“It fell on me”, wheezed Boone, willing his eyes to focus on something.

“What fell?”

“A plane. It was a plane”

Roxy shot Jack a worried glance. What was he talking about?

“Boone, Locke said you fell from a cliff”

Frowning at that – she hadn’t heard anything about how Boone had gotten to the valley – she listened to what Boone was trying to say.

“No, it was… It fell… the plane. It’s because of the hatch…”, at that Roxy froze in fear, “We found a hatch”

“Boone, Boone, stay with me, man. Hey, stay with me”

Boone groaned, his eyelids fell closed. 

“Locke said, John said … John said not to tell… about the hatch”

“What did Locke do? What hatch, what-?”, tried Jack, but Boone didn’t seem to hear him, as he slipped back into unconsciousness.

“I know where John is”, whispered Roxy, as she watched Jack try to wake up the injured man.

He paused, then-

“What?”

Roxy moved to face him, and replied, this time a little louder:

“I know what he was talking about”, at Jack’s furrowed brows, she added: “The hatch”

Jack shook his head in disbelief with a little confused smile playing on his lips as he struggled to understand what she was talking about.

“Roxy, what-? What hatch?”

“That’s not important right now. But I know where John ran off to”

Jack’s eyes pierced into hers with a mix of anger, confusion and distrust, before he nodded, turning his attention back onto the injured laying in front of him.

“Go. Bring him here”

She nodded and after giving her dying friend one last look, she took off running.

…

She ran towards the hatch as fast as she could. The hatch was long way from where the survivors lived at, but she already knew the patch towards it by heart. Her lungs protested strongly and her legs felt numb from all the running, but she only needed to remember Boone’s broken und bruised body to give herself a mental slap, which helped her keep dashing.

“JOHN! JOHN, I KNOW YOU ARE OUT HERE!”, she shouted, as the hatch became nearer and nearer. 

She found him on top of the hatch. His arms and shirt were strained with blood – Boone’s blood – and he was staring down at the hatch in a daze.

“John, you will come back to the camp, right now!”, she demanded, as she walked up to him and pushed him off the hatch in anger. 

“Roxy-“

“Shut up! You are going to come back right now and you are going to explain what happened to him!” the words spilled out of her mouth in anger as she dragged the man to his feet and pushed him towards the direction she’d just come from. 

“If he dies, it’s your fault”, she hissed as he protested against her rough way of handling him. 

How dare he run off without any explanation?! How dare he leave an injured Boone all alone?!

“Roxy, you don’t understand-“, he tried to talk him out of her abuse, but Roxy couldn’t deal with his bullshit anymore.

So she socked him in the face.

“You were responsible for him!”, she shouted as she raised her (now aching) fist once again. Locke just looked at her stunned as he spit blood, he had certainly not expected that from her.

“You dragged him into this mess-“, she aggressively gestured behind her towards the hatch, “- You dragged me into this mess. You were responsible for us, for him! And now he is going to die”, her voice broke off at the last sentence as tears filled her eyes. 

She lowered her fist in defeat as she fully registered that what she had just said was true. There was no point denying it. Boone is going to die.

“And it’s your fault”, she whispered, before the grief and the emotional pain overtook her. Suddenly feeling too weak, her knees buckled and she sank to her knees, letting her tears spill freely from her reddened eyes.


	10. The Black Rock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!  
> This is the longest chapter yet (if I remember correctly 5k) so I hope you'll like it. I spent a looooot of time writing this and it was a hustle.  
> I am also pleased to announce that we'll be meeting our dear Ben quite soon! Only a few chapters left~~  
> Reviews are appreciated as always :)  
> -B.

There arrived back at the beach just as Boone’s funeral started. Boone had passed away from his injuries not long after she took off towards the hatch and someone had already finished digging a grave for their lost friend while John and Roxy wandered back to their camp.

To say people were upset about seeing John appear in the middle of the funeral to tell how Boone died would be un understatement. Had it not been for Kate and Sawyer, Roxy was pretty sure Jack would’ve beat John to pulp. 

To ashamed of herself about having lied to the rest of the survivors in the previous weeks, she had kept herself out of their fight and had lingered in the background, and mourned her dead friend in silence.

She had gotten to know Boone well after spending nearly two weeks at the hatch with him. It was hard to imagine she would never be able to talk with him again; she had always liked their conversations and both of them had a similar taste in books and movies, so they never ran out of topics to chat about. 

The funeral pretty much ended after John and herself had turned up. Jack, exhausted and suffering from blood loss, had pretty much fainted as he shouted at John, which really put an end to the funeral.

The survivors had scattered after that, a handful tried to force Jack to lay down to rest while most of the rest wandered off to grieve and to do whatever they were usually doing every day.

Roxy had lingered at the fresh grave for a little longer and had said her final good-bye to her friend, only to get interrupted by the sound of a baby crying.  
She had looked around confused, trying to look for the source and wondered if she was hallucinating. There was no baby among the survivors after all.  
Her eyes soon fell on Claire, who was resting at the beach. Holding a baby. 

Roxy’s eyes widened in surprise as she gaped at the sight. When did Claire give birth? 

“Roxy!”, shouted Sayid from behind her just as she started to make her way towards her friend and the newest inhabitant of the island. 

“Roxy, I want you to take me to the hatch”

Turning to see Sayid jogging towards her in hurry, she stopped and waited for him to catch up. Looks like she won’t be able to meet Claire’s baby anytime soon after all.

“What?”

“The hatch Boone was talking about”, began Sayid as he arrived by her side. A backpack was already slung over his shoulder, his face was set in determination. Roxy knew he won’t take a “no”. 

Not that Roxy would’ve said “no” anyways…

“Okay”, she shrugged. There was no point in keeping it a secret anyways, not to mention the fact that Roxy had always felt bad about having to lie about it to her friends, so it was actually somewhat relieving to finally not having to keep it a secret anymore.

Sayid raised an amused eyebrow. 

“I had expected more hesitation”

Roxy shrugged again with a sigh. “Keeping it a secret was a mistake anyways”, she admitted, the grave behind her back acting as a proof of her statement.

Sayid nodded, his eyes moving towards the fresh grave behind her for a slit second.

“Show the way”

They picked up Jack and Locke on the way, the first one still worryingly pale but set on going with them while the latter had only shot a angry look at Roxy before reluctantly following them.

Roxy certainly did not fancy hiking back to the hatch just after she had arrived back to the beach, and every fiber of her being was screaming at her to have a rest as she hadn’t slept for more than a day now, but she just forced herself do suck it up and led the group to the hatch. They hiked mostly in silence, only Roxy dared to disturb it only to ask when Claire had given birth. 

Turns out she had gone into labour while Jack was trying to save Boone. Kate had to deliver the baby, which - obviously – must have gone well, based on the fact that she’s seen both Claire and her baby on the beach. 

“Boy or a girl?”, asked Roxy with a grin. She loved babies and couldn’t wait to meet Claire’s.

“A boy”, answered Jack as he carefully stepped across a fallen tree. “She hasn’t named him yet”

As the four continued hiking across the jungle towards the hatch, Roxy couldn’t help but wish they had some kind of a transportation, like a bike or a car. That would make life on the island a bit easier.

“How far it it?”, asked Jack impatiently after a while.

“Not very far, actually. We’re almost there”

They arrived to the hatch a few minutes later, Roxy and Locke hanging back as they watched the other two inspect it in curiosity.

“My god, what is this?”, gasped Jack after having walked around the hatch multiple times. He glanced at both Roxy and John with eyes widened in disbelief.

Roxy shrugged; she could only guess. Maybe it was some kind of a bunker?

“How long have you known about this?”

“I found it with Boone 3 weeks ago, give or take”, stepped up John.

“3 weeks”, whispered Jack insulted, “You’ve been out here for 3 weeks digging this thing up and you never told me about it?”

“With all due respect, Jack”, began John defensively, “Bun since when do I report to you?”

Roxy raised her eyebrows at that and sat down on a near by log to rest her body for a while. The two men kept arguing and arguing, until Jack finally asked the question that roxy had been asking herself every single day sinche she found out about the existence of the hatch.

“So how do we open it?”

“What?”, interrupted Sayid stunned and outraged, “You want to open it?”

All eyes flew to Sayid and Roxy frowned as she registered his surprise. Why wouldn’t they want to open it?

“I mean, that would be the logical thing, wouldn’t it?”, she couldn’t help but point out. 

“No! We should bury it! Anything could be inside!”, exclaimed Sayid flustered and frustrated. 

“Best case scenario there’s supplies. Worst case, we use it as a shelter”, tried Jack, who was all for opening it.

Roxy tilted her head at that. She could think of much worse cases than that. Sayid seemed to have similar thoughts.

“Actually, Jack. I can think of much worse cases than that. You notice anything about this hatch?”, he asked, nodding towards the addressed thing in the ground. 

Roxy frowned at his question. Had she misses something?

“There’s no handle. Could the reason for that be more obvious? Maybe it was never meant to be opened from the outside”

They hadn’t stayed at the hatch for much longer. Sayid had sticked to his opinion about not opening it and ther rest of them weren’t in the mood for arguing. And anyways, it’s not like the hatch could disappear into thin air any second, they have all the time in the world to discuss what to do with it and how to open it, if they decide to do so.

Arriving back at the beach, Roxy headed straight for the little tent she had made in case she’d rather spend the night at the beach. Throwing herself onto the ground, it only took her moments before she fell into a long-awaited sleep.

…

_Her heart was pounding in her chest like crazy while she sprinted across the jungle in a hurry, jumping across fallen trees and ducking behind trees as quickly as she could, as she tried to put as much distance between herself and whatever was chasing her. The hair on her body stood up in fear and hear ears rang as her chaser made that unworldly ticking noise again, a sound she hadn’t heard in nearly a month. It was terrifying._

_Leaping over a boulder, she slipped as she landed on a smooth stone, and rolled down a hill. Landing face first in a small stream, she clenched her teeth against the pain that fall had caused her, and scrambled to her feet, only to groan out in pain, as she put her weight on her left leg. She glanced around in panic, trying to think of a way to escape from the monster with her injured leg, but she was barely able to make something out in the darkness._

_Her soaked clothes clung to her body, as she dragged herself out of the stream and into a hollow tree and willed herself to keep still. Her quick breathing sounded like it was amplified and she was convinced that the monster would be able to hear her, no matter how hard she tried to hide._

_Her chest heaved as she listened to her surroundings and prepared herself to face the monster. Remembering the ever-present knife attached to her belt, her hand grabbed it and pulled it out in a swift motion, holding onto it for dear life._

_But nothing happened. The jungle was quiet, whatever had chased her was either gone or hiding and waiting for her to come out to attack her.  
Suddenly, something fell on her left shoulder, making her jump in fear. It was warm somewhat heavy. She glanced at it and immediately screamed in fear. It was a hand. Some had snuck up behind her and placed their hand on her shoulder. _

_Forgetting the monster, she screamed as she tried to shake and pull it off, but it remained on her shoulder as if it were attached with glue.  
“What do you want?!”, she screamed and she pulled the wrist, but nobody answered, the arm that seemed to be literally reaching through the bark, was unmoving.  
She tried to scramble away, her previous foot injury suddenly not bothering her at all, but the hand remained on her shoulder, no matter how much she tried to flee. Having tried everything to free herself, she did the only thing she could think of which should help her remove the hand from the shoulder.  
She lifter her knife and striked the arm, aiming to injure the person to force them to let go, but the weapon practically phased through the arm as if it were transparent, before slamming against something metallic. _

_And then, the hand disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared. But now her location also changed. The metal her knife had hit against, turned out to be a bar of a gigantic cage she suddenly found herself trapped in._

_Her head whipped around in confusion and terror as she tried to understand what was happening to her. Instead of being in a jungle and hiding in a hollow tree in the middle of the night, she now found herself being trapped in a massive cage, while the sun shone brightly in the sky. She was alone, the owner of the hand nowhere in sight._

_She dropped to her knees to search for her knife; it had slipped out of her hand after having come in contact with with the bars, but all she could find on the muddy ground was a blue wrapped chocolate bar. She frowned as she picked it up to inspect it only to see the six lettered word “Apollo” staring back at her._

_“Roxy”, came from somewhere behind her out of the sudden._

_Her head turned to face the unfamiliar voice in fear, and she found herself face to face with a taller blond man. He was wearing a white shirt and jeans, and looked at her calmly. Now that she could see him, she couldn’t help but think that she reminded her of someone, something about the odd calmness in his eyes seemed oddly familiar to her, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out from where she knew him._

_“Who are you?! What do you want?!”, she screamed terrified and tried to move to the other end of the cage, only to find herself being pulled back by something cool and smooth on her left wrist. Quickly giving it a glance, she became even more alarmed as her eyes fell on the handcuffs cuffing her to the cage._

_And if that wouldn’t be enough, the terrifying ticking sound of the monster roared through the jungle just she faced the blond man in front of her once again.  
“It’s alright, Roxy, he can’t harm you. You aren’t one of them”, said the man every so calmly, not even slightly bothered by the sound._

_The sound, which, came closer and closer with every passing second, forcing Roxy to ignore the man as the monster terrified her even more than he did.  
From the corner of her eye, she watched the blond main sit down on the ground and close his eyes as he rested against the metal bars in calmness._

_The monster roared once again, this time, Roxy knew it was only moments before she’d be able to see it. Before it would be able to see her. And kill her._

_Doing everything in her might to try to free herself from the handcuffs, she shouted out for the man._

_“Help me! He’s going to kill us!”_

_“He can’t harm you, Roxy. You aren’t one of them”, repeated the mysterious person without even opening his eyes._

_“One of who?! What are you-“, she started, but broke off at the monster emerged from behind the trees._

_It was a black pillar of black smoke._

_“You aren’t one of them”, repeated the man behind her once again, as she faced the black smoke in fear. That’s it. She is going to die._

“Roxy!”

Her eyes flew wide open in fright as she was woken up, automatically sitting up and reaching for her glasses as she tried to force herself to calm down. Her heart was poungding inside her chest just like it had in her dream, and all her nerves were on edge. 

“Roxy, c’mon, the French chick is here”, urged Hurley from the right outside her tent. 

What?, she frowned. The weird dream immediately forgotten, she hurried out of her tent and followed her friend to wherever he was taking her.

The French woman, Danielle, was indeed at their camp and a small group of people had already gathered around her. 

“Hurley, did something happen?”, she inquired, picking up on the tense mood Hurley was in.

“Dude, I have no idea, Jack wanted me to get you”, admitted her friend.

They hurried to join the slowly expanding group of people around Rousseau, just in time to hear her say:  
“-And now, they’re coming again. They’re coming for you”

While not having heard what she had been saying before that, it wasn’t hard to put the puzzle pieces together to understand what she was talking about.

“Who’s coming?”, asked Jack anxiously, even though Roxy was sure he already what Rousseau had been talking about.

“The Others. You have only 3 choices. Run. Hide. Or die.”

…

“What are we going to do, Jack? Do you believe her?”, she wondered while following Jack and John down the beach.

Jack turned to face her and tilted his head. 

“This is a woman who blew up her own shelter. And now she’s talking about seeing black smoke-,”, at that, Roxy froze, her heart dropping in her pants as flashed from her dream reappeared in front of her inner eye, -and whispers. I mean, she’s not playing with a full deck.”

Before she was able to get a word in and ask what she had said about the black smoke, John interrupted.

“That doesn’t mean that what she’s saying isn’t true”

Her having a nightmare about being chased by a pillar of black smoke right before Rousseau appears talking about the camp being attacked and seeing some kind of a black smoke, couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

“Well, if you want to focus on the "what if,", be my guest, but I've got to stick with what's tangible. And right now, that's the launching of the raft”

With that, Jack dashed towards Micheal, leaving John and herself hanging behind.

“John, what did she say about the black smoke?”, she whispered.

“What?”

“The black smoke… what did she say about that?”

She watched John furrow his brows and tilt his head at her in question, his suspicion very apparent on his face. 

“Why are you asking, Roxy? Did you…”, he began, before stepping closer to her and whispering, “…see something?”  
Roxy glanced around. Assured that nobody is near enough to eavesdrop on them, her eyes focused back on Johns’. Something about them told her he knew more than Jack did.

“I had a dream…. I saw a pillar of black smoke… it was chasing me”, she admitted. Locke’s eyes flashed in surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, but an approaching Jack interrupted him before he was able to.

“Roxy! Locke! What are you waiting for? C’mon and help Michael with the raft!”

…  
Helping Michael moving the raft had been just as hard as she had thought it would be. The mast breaking off had been unexpected but not surprising, given the fact that every time something good happens to the survivors, something bad must happen, as if the universe wanted to balance things out. 

And of course, just to put the metaphorical cherry on top, just Michael and Sawyer started blaming each other and insisting the other were the reason why the mast broke, Walt noticed a pillar of black smoke coming from the jungle.

What happened after that was a bit blurry. They had rushed to Danielle and started planning what do and where to hide nearly 40 people in the jungle, but the French woman was right in pointing out that hiding a group of people that large wasn’t a very easy thing to do.

Locke on the other hand, had been quick to suggest the hatch, making everyone who was listening turn towards him. Hurley, who didn’t know about the hatch at that point, had wondered what they were talking about, while Danielle just stayed silent and waited for an explanation, leaving the group of people who did know about the hatch, no choice but to lead them there. While wandering once again through the jungle towards the hatch, Roxy hoped Danielle would be able to help them find out what it was, but guessing by the way she just followed them wordlessly when they took off, she guessed that maybe she might also not know what it was.  
And she had been right; Rousseau was just as clueless as they all were.

Sayid was still not a big fan of their idea and protested while they discussed what might be in it and how they could open it, but pretty much everybody out of the small group had ignored his arguments. 

“You booby-trapped your shelter with explosives”, pointed out John, addressing the French woman, “You have any more?” At that, all heads turned towards the Rousseau, waiting for her answer in suspense. If explosives can’t get the hatch open then nothing will. 

“Dynamite, at the Black Rock, in the dark territory”

“Well, that’s 3 reasons to go right there”, quipped Hurley sarcastically. Roxy had to admit, that she herself would rather not go to a place called “the dark territory”.  
“If we’re to make it back by sunset we have to leave within the hour”

…

After rushing back to their camp to pick up some supplies for the journey – and some high school teacher who insisted on being an expert on dynamite - they took off, but not before Roxy went around and said good-bye to the raft people. 

“See you soon, Walt”, she smiled, as she hugged him good-bye, but the she knew even a blind person could see how worried she was. What if something happens to them? 

“We’ll come back for you, Roxy, don’t worry”, assured her little friend, thinking the reason why Roxy was anxious was because she’s afraid they wouldn’t come back with rescue. But if she had to be frank, she couldn’t help but admit that she’d gotten used to living on the island and if she could choose, she’d take Michael, Walt, Sawyer and Jin making it off the island safely over getting rescued in a heartbeat.

“Look out for Vincent sometimes, will you?”

“I will”, promised Roxy sincerely as they parted, already having heard that Walt had asked Shannon to take care of his beloved dog too. “He’ll be very happy to see you once we all make it off this island”, smiled Roxy to lift the mood. He was hiding it well, but Roxy knew the boy didn’t like that he has to leave Vincent behind.  
With a small pat on his back, she sent him off towards his dad and the raft. 

“It’s weird, huh?” came Kate’s voive from right behind her. “They are gonna leave this rock in a few hours and what are we gonna do? March through the jungle for dynamite”

Roxy huffed a laugh as she turned her head to Kate. 

“Yeah, it is. It would be nice to catch a break sometime.”, she pointed out, “It feels like something is happening every single day”

Kate laughed, “It really does.”

…

Together with Rousseau Jack, Locke, Kate, Hurley and the high-school teacher called Doctor Doctor, they started their journey towards “The Black Rock”, which apparently wasn’t an actual rock but a slave ship full of dynamite. Hurley tried to lighten the mood on the way with small talk and bad jokes but they marched mostly in silence.

“Let me ask you something, Arnzt”, he tried to befriend the grim high school teacher. Had Roxy not known Hurley as well as she did, she would have thought he was mispronouncing his name to get a rise out of him.

“Arzt, corrected the man, obviously not wanting to deal with Hurley.

“Arnzt”

“No, not Arnzt. Arzt. A-R-Z-T, Arzt”

“Sorry, man, the name’s hard to pronounce”, shrugged Hurley who had already given up.

Roxy huffed a laugh. As a German it was quite entertaining to listen to her friend try to pronounce an ordinary German word and fail miserably.

“Yeah, well, I know a bunch of 9th graders who pronounce it just fine”

“How about I call you by your first name?”

“How about you don’t?”, tried Arzt, looking like he’d rather just turn back around and walk back to the beach in order to not have to listen to Hurley any longer.

“Why not? I remember it from the plane’s manifest. I think Leslie’s a bitchin name.”

A pause before, “Arnzt is fine”

At that Roxy had to let out a laugh. 

They marched on, eventually entering the Dark Territory, which was marked by a piece of black fabric hanging from a branch. 

“The Black Rock is not far. This is where it all began… where my team got infected, where Montand lost his arm. We must move quickly”, explained their French friend.

…

It didn’t take them long until they finally arrived at the Black Rock. Their little run in with the monster had certainly slowed them down a bit, but at least nobody had been attacked or even come close to the monster. 

The first time Roxy laid her eyes on the Black Rock, she was sure she was just imagining what she was seeing. How does a slave ship end up in the middle of the jungle? It’s not like ships can just, walk on land. And the ship wasn’t even anywhere near the ocean, it was literally somewhere in the middle of the jungle.  
“How exactly does something like this happen?”, wondered Hurley, clearly having similar thoughts like she had. 

“Are you on the same island as I am?” replied Rousseau.

Fair enough, thought Roxy. It’s not like a ship in the middle of the jungle was the weirdest thing she had seen on the island in the four weeks she had been there, the monster made completely out of black smoke topped her list, closely followed by the existence of polar bears on the island.  
“I guess that explains it” agreed Hurley. 

The group moved towards the ship, taken over by curiosity. It’s not every day one gets the chance to look inside a few hundred years old trading ship, why let the opportunity go to waste?

“Hold on, wait, hold on. Wahat are we, a couple of miles inland?”, Arzt turned to Danielle for confirmation, “A tsunami probably swept it here, huh, right?”  
“Hey, hey, where are you going?”, demanded Jack, noticing Danielle slowly departing from the group. Having been too busy staring the Black Rock in awe and curiosity, Roxy hadn’t even noticed Danielle trying to depart from them. 

She turned her back to the ship and furrowed her brows at Rousseau’s sudden desire to leave them all alone. 

“Explosives are in the hold of the ship”, was all the French woman said, before turning her back towards them and moving to disappear into the jungle. 

“Rousseau, wait!”, shouted Jack.

“I did what you asked. You need dynamite, you don’t need me”. And then, she was gone, disappearing behind big treed and green bushes.

“Should we follow her or something?”, wondered Roxy. She had been the one who had lead them there after all, how are they supposed to find their way back to their camp if she just deserted them?

“Let her go, Jack”, John stopped Jack from doing exactly what Roxy had just asked out loud.

“Who’s going to lead us back?”, wanted Jack to know. 

“I’ll lead us back”, answered Locke, fully confident in his abilities. Roxy couldn’t help but wonder where he got all of his self confidence from, she could certainly use a some of it.

“Damn it,” signed Jack. A beat, then he continued, “You heard her, the explosives are in the hold. Let’s go”

“Woah, woah, woah, hold on, hold on.”, interjected Arzt. Eager to explore the ship, Roxy rolled her eyes at the interruption. What now?

“I came here to tell you how to handle dynamite, not explore some ghost ship, you think I’m go-“. Protested the high school teacher, before being interrupted by Jack, who, just like her, wanted to move on. 

“Alright, just stay out here.”

Hurley quickly announced that he’d also prefer to just stay outside and wait for them, before the rest of the group neared the ship. 

The ship was full of chained up skeletons. Slaves. 

Roxy, being the nice person that she was, immediately wandered off from the group while they searched for the dynamite, too curious to look around. The chained skeletons were rather disturbing, especially since they were slaves, but Roxy didn’t mind them very much, the bodies had long since rotten away, only leaving behing the bones, so it’s not like she had to stare at freshly decomposing corpses full of maggots.

While wandering around the ship, Roxy couldn’t help but wonder how old the ship must be. Stepping over a skeleton carefully to make sure she didn’t touch it, she guessed it must have been lying in the jungle for at least a few hundred years, based on how little was left of the corpses and her lacking knowledge about slave ships. 

Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of time to explore everything. The trio had found the dynamite rather quickly and decided to just carry the whole crate of it outside to open it.

Not knowing anything about explosives, but still having a fully functioning brain and the instinct to survive, Roxy tried to keep the distance between herself and the dynamite currently being carried by Jack and John at a maximum, just to be safe in case something happens.

The two men moved slowly and carefully, sweating with anxiety as they moved, but eventually they made it outside. 

Arzt of course, flipped out at the sight of Lock and Jack carrying the dynamite - as expected - and ordered them to place it on the ground as slowly and as carefully as they could before starting a long ramble about the history of explosives while carefully prying open the crate with a small pocket knife. 

“Do you have any idea what happens to dynamite in 90+ degree heat, huh?”

Roxy stepped back even further, placing herself as far away from the explosives as possible. 

“So you know? Any of you? It sweats nitroglycerin.”, he began, shortly stopping to order Jack to stop moving forward the crate, “Whoa, hey, what you doing? Did I ask you to come closer?”

Everyone took a step back, letting the expert handle the dynamite. Arzt reached into the cradle and slowly removed a stick of dynamite, holding it up carefully for everyone to see. 

“Dynamite is nitroglycerin stabilized by clay. Nitroglycerin is the most dangerous and unstable explosive known to man.”, without glancing up he ordered, “Kate, give me your shirt.”. At Kate’s questioning look, he added: “I need to wrap the dynamite. Just throw it to me, right there. Be careful, c’mon, hurry up.”  
Kate quickly took off her shirt just as she was asked to and gave it to Arzt.

“Okay, good, now back up, back up, back up. Just back up. Get out of my way. Any of you ever hear about the guy who invented nitroglycerin? Probably not -- because he blew his freaking face off.“, Roxy watched the man wet Kate’s shirt and carefully wrap it arounf the dynamite. “His lab assistant came into the room, saw that his mentor detonated, and he said, "Huh, I guess this stuff does work." Alright, we're not going to take any more of this stuff than we need because nitroglycerin is extremely temperamental, so we-“ BOOM!

The dynamite exploded suddenly, sending bits and pieces of Arzt flying and raining down on the other five.

“Dude”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I wanted to finish the finale in one chapter but somehow it turned too long and I decided to split it into two chapters. The next one will be posted in a few days!  
> -B.


	11. Dynamite

The unexpected death of Arzt had been rather… well, unexpected. After shaking off the initial shock – and shaking off the remains of the exploded teacher that had unfortunately landed on them – Jack and John wasted no time to get back to their task and slowly and even more carefully than before, wrapped up some dynamite to carry back with them.

The plan had been to take three but John reminded everyone that it would be more wise to take six and split them up between two people, as a failsafe, in case one of them ends up sharing Arzt’s unfortunate demise.

Jack, John and Kate volunteered to take a bag, practically fighting for the chance of carrying a bag filled with dynamite across the jungle as if that opportunity equaled to winning the lottery. Roxy and Hurley, still possessing some common sense, have kept themselves out of it and let the three fight over the dynamite. 

Their argument escalated to the point of drawing straws, a point, at which Roxy came to the conclusion that the three of them must have left their brain cells at the beach, as there was no way in hell what she was seeing could be true otherwise. They were literally drawing straws to decide who gets to carry dynamite… unbelievable.

In the end, fate decided Kate and John should be the potential candidate for joining Arzt, against Jack’s wishes. But he sucked it up and helped both John and Kate put on the backpacks while Hurley and Roxy watched from a safe distance.

“The sun sets in 90 minutes, give or take. If we want to get back to the hatch, we’re going to have to hustle”, said John as they started getting ready to take off into the jungle.

“Okay, this is how we do this.” ,started Jack, “I’ll lead, Kate you’re right behind me. Then Hurley and Roxy.” The three nodded, agreeing to his plan. After all, it makes sense that Kate and John stay as far from each other as they can. “John, you bring up the rear. If you start to see me heading the wrong way…”

“We should stagger our formation. Keep a safe distance from each other”, added John.

“Alright, we stagger. If anyone hears or sees anything…”

“Like the security system that eats people?”, wondered Hurley, not seeming very happy about going back to the jungle and possibly stumbling across the monster. 

Well, not that Roxy would expect him to be happy about that, who even would like to meet that thing anyways? She certainly did not, especially not after that weird dream she had…

“Yeah, like that. You two,”, said Jack, nodding at Kate and Locke, “you take your packs off, you put them down and you run. You got it?”

“Got it”

“Yes, sir”

Jack nodded, pleased with everyone’s cooperation. 

“Okay, let’s do this”

…

They hiked across the jungle at a much slower tempo then they had previously, everybody anxious about the dynamite. To Roxy every single step felt like a ticking time bomb wanting to go off any second but fortunately everything seemed to go pretty well. 

“So, dude?”, Hurley interrupted the anxious silence that had fallen over them, “What do you think is inside that hatch thing?”

Roxy pondered on that for a moment. Yeah, what could be inside the hatch? Food would certainly be nice… 

“What do you think is inside it?”, asked Locke instead.

“Stacks of TV dinners from the 50’s, or something. And TV with cable, some cell phones, clean socks and soap-”, Roxy couldn’t help but smile as she imagined all that. Oh, how much she missed junk food, technology and showers… 

“-Twinkies,” continued Hurley, probably daydreaming about all those things just like she was, “you know, for dessert, after the TV dinners. Twinkies keep for, like 8000 years, man.”

Locke actually laughed at that, which was odd, as Roxy had never seem him laugh until then. She had seen him smile a few times, and grinning was something is does often as well, but the heartfelt laughter was new.

“I like Twinkies, too”

“I really don’t wanna seem dumb but… what are Twinkies?”, asked Roxy with a grin. She guessed it’s probably some very specific American thing that only American people know. She can’t remember every having heard about it.

Everyone’s head whipped to look at her like crazy; Hurley’s face full of pure disbelief.

“What?!”, he squeaked, not trusting he heard her right. “Dude, everyone knows what a Twinkie is!”

“Well, I’m German, so…”, shrugged Roxy still grinning, enjoying Hurley’s hilariously shocked expression. The rest of the group had all similar expressions on their faces, albeit less horrifies ones. 

“Dude, you don’t know what you’ve been missing out on. Twinkies are like, the best thing ever”, exclaimed Hurley.

Roxy laughed, even though she doubted Twinkies could be that good. 

“So, John, what do you think is inside?”, she asked to turn the attention away from her and back to the previous topic.

He thought for a moment before answering. 

“Hope. I think hope’s inside.”

They continued walking in silence after that. 

Until, of course, the worst thing that could happen to them while they we recarrying instable explosives in their backpacks, actually happened to them.

Jack and Kate had seen the pillar of black smoke slide by a short distance to their right. Roxy had desperately hoped they wouldn’t encounter the monster once again, but she should have known the universe had other plans for them.

Everyone scrambled away as fast as they could, trying to find a place to hide from the monster. A sense of déjà vu overcame Roxy as she dashed between the trees and her weird dream came to her mind. 

“Locke! What are you doing?!”, she heard Jack shout. Turning to find out what he hell he was talking about, her eyes fell on Locke standing still as if he was waiting for the monster to attack him. 

Jack took off towards John to try to make him come to his senses, but John on the other hand, just continued walking towards the place the monster could be heard from.

“Jack!”, shouted Kate as she noticed the doctor follow Locke, before running after him without a second thought. 

At that moment Roxy knew that yes, the three of them had indeed left their brain cells at the beach. 

“Dude! What do we do now?!”, shouted Hurley, after he too noticed everyone besides them was running towards the monster instead of away from it.

“We hide!”, she shouted back the obvious answer. Ain’t no way in hell she was dumb enough to turn around to follow the three. She valued her own life too much for that.

They soon found a big hollow tree which was perfect for hiding. While catching their breaths, Roxy couldn’t help but notice how much the tree resembled the one from her dream. 

Suddenly, a loud explosion rang through the jungle, making both Roxy and Hurley freeze and look at each other in worry. That must have been the dynamite.  
It had indeed been the dynamite, as she later found out, after reuniting with the rest of the group, who were unharmed, fortunately. According to them, the monster had nearly dragged John into some kind of a hole, but Jack and Kate’s quick thinking had saved the captured man from getting pulled into the hole. 

…

It was already dark by the time the group arrived to the hatch. Roxy couldn’t help but sigh in relief as her eyes fell on the hatch, being happy that they managed to arrive safely. She felt like a huge weight has been taken off her shoulders, knowing the mystery of the hatch will be over soon. It was finally time to open the damn thing.

“Hugo, take these extra sticks back a couple hundred yards”, ordered John. Jack handed Hurley his backpack, already having removed the dynamite they would need.   
Hurley looked anything but happy about having been assigned that task, but he relented and did as he was asked to without complaining.

“Can I have a flashlight? Because, uh, the torch with the dynamite thing, not making a whole lot of sense to me.

Roxy exchanged her flashlight for Hurley’s torch. He was right, it would be much safer for him to not take the torch.

“Kate and Roxy, you run the fuse. Jack and I will rig the charges.”, continued John.

Everyone went to work, Roxy helping Kate roll out the fuse…well, actually all she did was just walk next to Kate while she rolled the fuse, as it was a one person’s job.

“This is as far as it goes”, said Kate, after finishing. Roxy glanced back to the hatch, which to her, was not far enough.

“It’s far enough”, said Locke, “I’ll light it, you take cover. There’ll be enough to burn time for me to get clear.

Roxy nodded, already taking off to look for cover. She couldn’t believe they were finally gonna find out what was in the hatch. Her heart pounding with nervosity, she knelt down behind a big tree, far away from the hatch. Not wanting to get hurt by accident, she had put enough space between herself and the hatch, so that she was barely able so see it form her cover.

And then out of nowhere, Hurley started shouting and claiming that they can’t do what they were about to do.

What the hell he was talking about, Roxy didn’t know, all she heard were his loud protests, closely followed by Jack’s shouts for him to stop and to hide.

Just as Roxy herself was about to shout out for her friend in worry, fearing he was standing too close to the dynamite, a loud explosion echoes through the jungle. Her ears ringing from the loud sound, she left her cover and dashed to the hatch, to find John already trying to uncover the opening. 

While the others recovered, she rushed to his side to aid him. Together, they were able to uncover the opening in no time, revealing a long narrow passage with a broken ladder going down into the ground.

They did it. 

They had opened the hatch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUN DUN DUN  
> I'm very happy to announce that with this chapter, season 1 of Lost is officially finished in Apollo! Which is awesome cuz we all know what happens in season 2~  
> I can't wait to finally debut Ben in this, he is one of the protagonists of Apollo after all.  
> Please leave a review if you'd be so kind, I'm happy about any kind of feedback!  
> Thank you for your comments and the kudos, you guys have no idea how much they mean to me.  
> Please stay tuned for the next chapter. Here's a little spoiler: the title will be "Into the Unknown" (it has nothing to do with the song, but feel free to pretend it does if you'd like to).  
> Have a nice day~  
> -B.


	12. Into the unknown

To say Roxy was a little disappointed with Jack’s sudden refusal to explore the hatch was an understatement. The ladder in the hatch looked broken, but John and Kate had already started planning to rig up a harness and lower people down there. While Roxy did not necessarily fancy being lowered 15 meters into a dark hole in the ground by a bunch of people, she agreed that that would be the only way they’d be able to get inside the hatch.

Jack, on the other hand, refused to listen to them and firmly stated that they won’t be lowering anybody in the hatch. The rest of the survivors were waiting for them to get back and tell them what to do. They can’t just go disappear exploring the insides of a mysterious hatch while leaving the rest of them all alone without any answers. 

Knowing there’s no point in arguing with Jack, Roxy relented somewhat disappointed and waited for Jack and John to pack up the rest of the dynamite to take with them. 

“Why’d you do that?”, Hurley addressed John while the group marched back to their camp, “Why’d you light the fuse, man?”

Roxy frowned at her friend. In the heat of the moment, she’d forgotten Hurley’s sudden desperate protests against opening the hatch right before John did exactly that. 

“Why wouldn’t I light the fuse?”, countered John.

“Ah, maybe because I was running towards you, waving my arms, yelling “don’t do that?"

“Well, you got a point there”, laughed John, “I guess I was just excoted to get inside. I mean, that’s why we came here, isn’t it? That’s why we all went all the way to the Black Rock - and why we got the dynamite to blow the hatch. And we did it so that we could get inside, Hugo”

“And to save everybody’s lives”, added Jack, somewhat provoked by John’s words.

“And to save everyone’s lives”

“Or, maybe, it was just our destiny, right, John?”

“Maybe”

Roxy glanced between the two men, noticing their heated looks. Wondering why they never seemed to get along, no matter what they were doing, she rolled her eyes.

“Guys, it’s the hatch door”, interrupted Kate suddenly, “you’d better see this”

Furrowing her brows, she went to join Kate. THe hatch door was lying in front of her on the ground, the word “quarantine” stenciled on the inside in big and bold black letters. 

…

The discovery had been rather shocking, But even after seeing the word “quarantine” etched across the door of the hatch, she found herself still being curious of what was inside. 

They hurried back to their camp, and reached the valley in record time. The rest of the survivors were all waiting anxiously for their return, with Sayid stepping up as a leader. Jack obviously wasted no time to tell the rest of the group about what they have been up to since they took off. 

“Locke found, uh, a hatch in the ground about half a mile from here. We left to… to blow it open so that we could hide inside - so all of us could hide inside, in case - But that doesn’t matter now because it’s not going to work, There’s no way for all of us to get down in there tonight”

“Jack, where’s Dr Arzt?”, inquired Charlie, having noticed the high school teacher was missing. 

“He didn’t make it”

“Did you see them? Did you see the Others?”, came from Shannon.

Roxy glanced at Jack, wondering if he’d tell them about their encounters with the Smoke Monster. She doubted he would, but Charlie cut in before he was able to respond.

“Hey, Shannon, there are no Others. We’ve already had this conversation”

“What the hell would you know about it - just because you didn’t see anything?!”

“There’s no one out there!”

“You don’t know!”

“You’re just making up rubbish!”

With eyebrows raised in concern, Roxy watched Shannon and Charlie fight, not daring to interrupt them. The tension between the two was very apparent, they must have clearly fought previously. 

“Hey!”, Jack stepped up, “Everything is going to be okay. We’re going to be alright. We’re going to stay here tonight, okay, together. We still got 4 guns. We’ll put lookouts at all entrances. We’re going to be safe as long as we stay together. The sun comes up in 3 hours and we are all going to be here to see that happen. I promise”

As if on cue, John decided to appear carrying a caple, a determined look on his face. 

“John, what are you doing?”, wanted Jack to know. Telling by the pissed off look on his face, he seemed to already know what Locke was planning to do. Roxy, not being dense, already knew what Locke was planning to do. It would be very out of character for him to listen to what Jack says anyway.

“I’m getting some cable”

“What for?”

“It’s for the hatch. I’m going in”

Jack didn’t even bother to try to argue with him.

“Do you really think that’s the smartest thing to do right now, John?”

“I doubt it”, answered John. That was unexpected, Roxy had thought he’s say, something along the lines of, ‘of course now is the time, Jack, I can’t wait til the morning comes’-

“In fact, you’re right”, he continued, “The safest thing is to stay here, wait for morning, wait for these Others, to see if they ever show up, wait for the brave folks on the raft to bring help… but me, I’m tired of waiting” 

And with that, he exited the valley. 

… 

Following John to the hatch hasn’t been a hard decision to make. In fact, it hadn’t been a decision at all, any other option she had wasn’t even worth thinking about. She had to see what was inside the hatch. Having spent such a long time digging it up with John and Boone and wondering what about what could be inside, she knew she had to be there. 

And anyways, two are always better than one. She’ll make sure John doesn’t accidently slip and break his neck or something. That would be rather unfortunate after all.

Knowing the way to the hatch by heart, she marched to the hatch, only to find not only John, but also Kate, sitting on a log and looking like they were waiting for her to arrive.

“I didn’t expect you to be here too”,she addressed Kate. She was usually on Jack’s side when he and John argued about something, but then again, she did seem very eager to get inside the hatch when they blew it open.

“I on the other hand had expected you”, joked Kate.

They quickly set up the cable John had brought with himself and walked over the plan. Kate would go down first, followed by Roxy. John would remain outside and bring them up again when needed. Well, as long as they don’t end up eaten by a monster or something. 

Fastening the cable harness around Kate, she gave her an encouraging smile and a thumbs up before stepping back and following John in taking the cable in her hands. None of them knew what would be on the bottom or in what condition the ladder was in. If Kate slips, they would be able to stop her from falling by lowering her down instead. 

Kae took a deep breath and exhaled loudly before starting to climb down the ladder. 

“Wait, what do I say if I need to stop?”, she asked.

“Stop”

“Okay, let’s go”

And with that, she disappeared down the hatch. 

Locke and Roxy lowered her slowly, gripping the cable firmly in case anything went wrong. Which of course happened nearly right away. 

One of the trees holding the harness broke, leaving Roxy and Locke holding onto the cable for dear life - or more like, for Kate’s life - as they struggled to not let it slip from between their fingers. 

“Kate, are you alright?!”, shouted John as they tried to support her weight. Damn, it was harder than Roxy had imagined to be. 

“Yeah, I dropped the light! Maybe we should-”, she shouted back, but John only continued to lower hew further down the shaft.”Well, okay then”

Suddenly a light inside the hatch went on, making both Roxy and Locke freeze mid motion. She gulped. 

Someone must be in there.

“Stop!”, screamed Kate.

“What is it?!”

“I think there’s something down here!”

Right after that, something pulled at the other end of the cable, leaving Roxy and Locke struggling to hold onto it. Roxy couldn’t hold onto it any longer and it slipped out of her hands, bruising her palms. John fell back as Kate’s weight was taken from the cable and she could only stare at the hatch in pure terror at the fact that something - or even worse, someone - was down there and that they had just pulled Kate down.

…

John and Roxy wasted no time in securing the rope once again, making sure it won’t come lose this time - before starting to lower themselves down the hatch. Roxy went first, being lighter than John had her at an advantage. Her decent was much faster than John’s would have been, and who knows what had gotten Kate. For all they knew, she could be in serious danger and every second counted.

Fortunately, the cable didn’t snap while she lowered herself down the shaft, which she was incredibly thankful about. Reaching the bottom of the hatch, her feet stepped into a puddle of water - well, she hoped it was water and not blood - and she pulled at the cable twice to signal to John that she had reached the bottom. Shouting didn’t seem like a good idea at all, if someone was indeed down there then having the element of surprise on side would put her at a much needed advantage. 

She crept towards the source of the light as silently as she could, her heart pounding in her chest like crazy as she slowly neared it. The wall she was basically pressing herself against was cold and rough, but she didn’t let herself be distracted by the interior design of the hatch.   
Arriving at the end of the tunnel like passage, she pressed herself fully against the wall as she cautiously peered into the adjoining room. She didn’t know what to expect to be frank, but it certainly hadn’t been a fully equipped living room with bookshelves filled with books to the rim and with a couch and even a small kitchen.   
On the ground lay Kate, unconsciously. Her breathing stopped, thinking she was dead for a moment, but the steady rise and fall of her chest reassured her that she was alright. 

Noone else was in the room, so after double checking the room, she silently rushed to Kate’s side and gave her a little shake in hopes of waking her up.  
“Kate. Kate, wake up. We have to move”, she hissed, her voice barely above a whisper. 

Kate’s eyelashes fluttered as she came to her senses. She groaned before slowly opening her eyes, her gaze unfocused for a moment before coming to a rest on her face. Her eyes widened comically in fright as she struggled to sit up in her disoriented state.

“Roxy, behind you!”, she croaked out, her eyes fixated on something - someone - behind her.

Roxy’s heart dropped into her pants as Kate’s words reached her ears, her hand rushing to the knife at her belt in a flash as she spun around in quick motion, holding out the knife in front of her in protection.

But before she was able to properly lay her eyes on the person now in front of her, a sudden motion from the left was registered from the corner of her eye, before realizing all too late that what she was sensing was a bat being swung at her. 

And then everything went black.


	13. 108 Minutes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya.  
> First of all, sorry for the long wait, lol. School kept me busy. But here I am, now! Updating this once again.  
> Don't worry, I'm a few chapters ahead of what I post so you can count on at least one update every 7 days.   
> I'm curious how many people are reading this, by the number of kudos, I guess it's about 15ish people, but would you mind leaving a comment if you are actively reading this? Like, a "me" is enough, I'm just curious how many people care about this, haha. Longer comments are of course also welcome, whatever floats your boats.   
> Hope you like this chapter!  
> -B.

As Roxy slowly started to rejoin the world of the awake and conscious, she realized three things at once.

The first thing was that her head hurt like hell. Whatever the mysterious person had knocked her out with had landed a pretty good hit. And telling by the wetness on the side of her face, she was pretty sure that she was also bleeding. Af if she didn’t have enough problems already.

The second thing she realized was that she was certainly not lying on the ground. Wherever she was, it was soft and comfortable. COmpared to the hard ground she had been sleeping on for the past month, it was heaven. 

Only as she properly came to her senses, did her body register that someone was next to her. She could feel someone inhale and exhale right next to her, and she was sure that someone was touching the injured side of her face with cautious fingers.

Her eyes snapped open immediately and she sat up in the blink of an eye, her dizziness not holding her back from swinging out to try to punch the person who had been inspecting her.

“Hey, hey, Roxy, stop, it’s me!”, protested the person, his voice very familiar to hear ears.

Willing herself to calm down to focus, she squinted at the person to her left - her glasses were missing from her face and she could only hope they didn’t get damaged during her assault - and saw Jack holding a bloodied wet towel. 

She sighed in relief before remembering her surroundings and glancing around in confusion. She was lying on a bed, a bunk bed, still inside the room she had found Kate in before getting knocked out. She tried to sit up properly, but her head was aching and her dizziness still hasn’t completely left her. Noticing what she was trying to do, Jack aided her with a steady hand on her shoulder.

“What happened?”, she asked as she glanced around the room. The lack of her glasses hindered her from making out every single detail but she wasn’t blind enough to not see that they were alone in the room.

“Desmond got you pretty good. You were unconscious for a while. How’s your head?”

“Hurts. Who’s Desmond?”

Jack gestured around the bunker while shrugging. 

“He was living here. He was the one who knocked you out”

“Where’s Kate? And Locke?”

“I’m right here”, came from somewhere behind Jack. It was John, she must have overseen him when she glanced around the first time. Huh, maybe she is even blinder than she originally thought. John was standing in front of a book shelf, looking through them as if he was searching for something specific before pulling something black from one of the shelves.

“And Kate? Is she alright?”, she inquired while standing up, lifting her head to examine the size of the injury on her head. Carefully touching her temple with her fingertips, she could already feel a bump being formed on her head. The iron-y smell and the wetness of the left side of her face let her come to the conclusion that it had bleed quite a lot, although Jack seemed to have cleaned her up quite thoroughly while she had been unconscious. 

“She went to get Sayid. Don’t worry, head injuries bleed a lot, you are gonna be alright”, he assured her, before picking up her glasses from a nearby table and handing them to her. 

Fortunately, they were still intact, which was a huge relief. She didn’t miss the days she had to walk around looking like a pirate because one of her lenses was missing. Nope, she didn’t miss those times at all.

“I think this is it”, came from John, who was holding up a film canister.

…

Turns out that the hatch was a station called “The Swan”, a project belonging to “The Dharma Initiative”, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. The orientation film John, Jack and Roxy had watched while Desmond, the long haired scot who’d whacked her over the head, tried to fix the computer, was both informational and very confusing. Long story short, there was a computer in the hatch into which a certain code has to be entered every 108 minutes. For what exactly, the film didn’t say, but Desmond seemed very … upset… about the broken computer and he fully believed they needed to push the button, so Roxy just decided to go along with it and believe that the button needs to be pushed. 

Jack on the other hand, wasn’t a big fan of having to push the button. No, on the contrary, he was pretty angry about the fact that Desmond was so obsessed with the computer. Claiming the whole thing to be an experiment, Jack refused to listen and refused to stay in the hatch after Desmond had run off, leaving John and Roxy behind to wait for Sayid to arrive. 

“What now?”, asked Roxy after everything had calmed down. She suddenly felt very out of place and uncertain what they should do. 

“We wait for Sayid to fix the computer. And then we will push the button”

They did exactly that. While waiting for Kate to arrive with Sayid, she let her curiosity take over her and having nothing better to do, she did what they originally wanted to do after blowing open the hatch. She went to explore it.

The bathroom was the first thing she discovered, the sight of the shower making her want to jump under it in her clothes. Oh, how much she longed to have a proper shower, the ocean water wasn’t enough to make her feel clean and they barely had any soap left anyways. 

But the room that really made her jaw fall to the ground was the pantry. Oh, yes, the pantry. It was full of shelves, stacked from the ground to the ceiling with boxes and boxes of food. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Her diet in the last month had consisted of boar and fruits and just the sight of the food she was seeing was enough to make her her stomach rumble and her mouth water. 

Forgetting anything of importance, she practically ran to the box the closest to her and opened it impatiently. What she saw nearly made her tear up.

It was chips. Greasy and delicious potato chips inside a white packaging which she ripped open without hesitation. Wasting no time, she grabbed a handful of the delicious food and stuffed as much into her mouth as possible, her eyes closing in bliss as the flavours met her tongue. She was in heaven. Nothing has ever tasted so good to her. 

“Jack! Jack!”, came Kate’s voice from somewhere in the bunker as she was blissfully chewing on her third portion, making her snap back to reality. Oh, right, the computer. She’d forgotten about that.

Showing another handful of chips into her mouth, she rolled up the, now half empty, bag and - giving it a longing look - left the pantry.  
Kate had brought not only Sayid, but also Hurley with herself, both of them glancing around the inside of the hatch in curiosity and awe.  
“What is this place?”, wondered Sayid.

“John, where is Jack?”, wanted Kate to know.

John quickly filled them in on what they had missed while Roxy by the door. Sayid was very cooperative and - as it turns out - good with computers. It took him about twenty minutes to fix it while Roxy and Locke glanced at the timer every few minutes anxiously. But then, when the timer counted past four minutes and an alarm started to ring out, the lights finally came back on, which to Roxy was a good sign.

Locke on the other hand was very impatient, trying to make Sayid hurry by bothering him with questions every few seconds. 

“You have to-”

“I know what I have to do. Reconnected the processor, replaced the transformer…”, Sayid hit a switch on the computer and lo behold, it turned on.

Roxy let a relieved sigh escape her lips. While she had no idea what would happen if the timer reached zero, she had a feeling that pushing the button like Desmond had done, was important. 

“It’s on!”

“Okay, so now what?”, asked Kate, as if it wasn’t obvious what they have to do.

“There was a code. He made me enter it…”, said John, already sitting down in the chair and facing the computer. 

“What code?”, wanted Hurley to know.

“Do you remember what it is?”, came from Sayid. All four watched Locke uncertain. After all, what can they do with a fixed computer if they don’t know the code they have to enter?

“4… 8…”, he started, typing the letters into the computer. As Roxy watched the little green digits appear on the monitor, a little voice in the back of her mind screamed at her. 

“Now wait a minute”, protested Hurley, but John didn’t lietsen.

“15… 16…”

Suddenly, a conversation she had with Hurley came to her mind, allowing her to put two and two together. Her eyes widened in surprise as she faced her friend, who had a terrified look on his face. Those were the numbers Hurley had told her about!

“Dude, I’m serious, stop”, stressed Hurley.

“Hugo, this isn’t the time or the place.”

“Yeah well I think it is!”

Ignoring him, John continued with the next number, 23.

“What is this thing? You don’t even know what it does! i mean we need-”

“32”, continued John.

Roxy frowned. That number didn’d…. look right?

“You know what? Forget it, go ahead, do your thing”

John’s finger hovered above the “execute” button, hesitating as he glanced at the numbers once again.

“It’s not 32”, came from behind them. Everyone turned to see Jack in the hallway. “He just told me - Desmond. the last number is 42”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure”

Locke deleted the last number and typed 42. But just as he was about to press the execute button, he stopped and exclaimed that Jack should be the one doing it.

Roxy groaned. At first John is all about pushing the damn buttons and now that the time is running out way too quickly, he suddenly chickens out? What the…

The two fought like they always did, before Jack finally resented and pushed the damn “execute” button passive aggressively just as the timer hit 0:01. 

Everyone watched the number reset to 108:00 in silence, before John broke it. 

“I’ll take the first shift”

…

Having nothing better to do with her life than to push a few buttons every 108 minutes, Roxy also volunteered to take shifts. At least this way she’ll have something to do. And she had to admit that being in a bunker with a bed and running water and books and food, was a pretty good reward for the whole button pushing. 

Talking about food; Jack had been so kind to ask her and Hurley to make an inventory of the food in the pantry and to figure out how they’ll gonna distribute it. Roxy hadn’t minded the extra task;she was in the bunker anyways and that way she would have something to spend the time with while she waited for the 108 minutes to be up. Her friend on the other hand, wasn’t a big fan of Jack’s suggestion and tried to talk himself out of helping with the inventory but given the fact that he also didn’t really have anything better to do, he surrendered. 

Leaving Roxy behind in the hatch, Hurley had wandered back to the beach, claiming he wanted to grab some of his stuff. But by the way he didn’t look her in the eyes in spite f facing her, Roxy knew he just wanted to get away for a while. The poor guy appeared to be pretty traumatised by the numbers. Not that Roxy would blame him for that, by what he’d told her when they went off to find Rousseau, a lot of horrible things had happened to him after his big lotto win with those numbers. And even Roxy had to admit that the reappearance of the code was a little spooky. 

Fortunately, he was nice enough not to abandon her completely. About two hours after he’d left the hatch, he’d reappeared with Rose in tow, both carrying a suitcase full of dirty laundry. 

“Hey Rose”, greeted Roxy, walking over to them. Rose nodded back at her as a greeting while she looked around the place with a frown. 

“Someone actually lived down there?”, she wondered.

“Yeah, his name’s Desmond”, she tilted her head to the left to show them her bruised temple. “He’s very … welcoming”

“Hurley!”, came Jack’s angered voice from behind them. “Who else did you tell?”

“No one. I swear. Dude, it’s a big job, Roxy and I needed help”

While raising her eyebrows at her friend’s obvious lie, she nodded, deciding to just go along with it. What’s the harm in showing the others the hatch anyway? That had been the plan in the beginning, what difference does it make if more than just a handful of people know about what’s in it?

“She’s cool. She won’t tell anyone”, promised Hurley.

“Honey, I don’t even know what I would say”, added Rose, still looking around the place in curiosity.

It took the three of them a couple of hours (and a few breaks) to finish with the inventory but the question of what they should do with all the food and how they should distribute it was still unanswered. By the looks of it, the food would last one person a few months, but a group of 40 people would finish it way faster.  
But thankfully Hurley came up with the brilliant idea of having a big feast and just eat whatever they want. The food wouldn’t last long anyway, but this way, they could make a thing out of it and have something nice for once. 

She should have known the little state of euphoria wouldn’t last long. In fact, things turned very bad very quickly, as about 48 hours after their happy little feast, Shannon got shot.


	14. United - Divided

Roxy had been enjoying a nice and calm day at the hatch, taking turns in pushing the button and spending the rest of her time reading and lounging on the sofa. She even talked John - who she was sharing the shift with - into playing a few rounds of chess. John, as it turned out, was more of a Backgammon player, which showed when Roxy won the third game in a row. She wasn’t completely sure if she managed to do that because John was a bad chess player or because his mind was elsewhere, but she enjoyed her little victory nevertheless.

Just as the two were about to set up the board for their fifth game in a row, the sound of the entrance door banging open echoes through the hatch, making both of them pause mid movement. 

Hearing the sound of two people hurriedly doing something, they rushed to investigate. 

Jack and Kate were hurriedly carrying a very familiar looking unconscious man, who instead of being carried around like a dead person, was actually supposed to be somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific on a raft.

"Is that Sawyer?!"

"What happened?"

The alarm signalling the timer being at 4 minutes rang out right then, as if it couldn't have waited a few more minutes until Roxy and Locke new what the fuck was happening.

"John, the button", was Jack's only answer, being too busy transporting their unconscious friend into the bathroom.

"Where are you taking him?"

"He's burning up. We need to get him in the shower - bring his fever down"

Roxy nodded, yeah that made sense.

"What can I do?", came from a very worried Kate.

"Go through the medical stash; there's a bottle of Ofloxacin", ordered Jack.

"Ofloxacin…"

"Ofloxacin, little white pills. Bring the alcohol and some gauze patches. Roxy, strip that bed and make sure it has clean sheets on it!"

Shooting a worried last look at her knocked out injured friend on the ground, she wasted no time to dash into the living room area of the hatch to do exactly as she was told. Questions and questions were burning behind her eyes as she tried to make sense of what was happening.

As far as she knew, Sawyer had been on the raft. He should be on the raft, getting sunburnt and annoying Michael, Walt and Jin in the middle of the ocean somewhere. But instead he was back with them, unconscious and feverish, with a nasty looking wound on his shoulder.

"Hello", greeted someone from behind her. She whipped around startled by the unfamiliar voice, her hands full with the dirty sheets she had just stripped from the bed, and came face to face with an unfamiliar tall dark man. 

"Who're you?", she clenched the sheets tighter to her chest. Had he brought Sawyer to them? 

"I'm Mr Eko", he answered with a small nod. "I'm from the tail section of the plane", he added.

Her eyes widened in surprise. The tail section? 

Mr Eko's eyes wandered around the place before focusing on the open door of the armory. Roxy had to admit she didn't know why it was open, Jack and John usually made sure to have it closed at all times to avoid any temptation. 

"What happened? Out there, what happened?", entered Locke, not phased by the stranger’s sudden appearance at all.

“There was an accident”

“What kind of accident?”

“A girl was shot and killed”

Roxy’s eyes widened in fear while she shot Locke a worried glance. 

"What did she look like?", she asked warily.

"She was tall with blonde hair. There was an Arab man…"

Shannon!

"Shannon", whispered Locke, confirming her thoughts.

Roxy's eyes welled up with tears but she forced herself to not let them spill. After Boone's very recent and sudden death, Shannon's hit twice as hard.

"How many are you? From the tail section? ,she wiped at her eyes with her fingers, not being able to look up from the ground in grief.

"Four"

"Four… why didn't the rest of them come back with you?"

"What about Michael, Walt and Jin? Are they with you too? Are they alright?"

"Michael and Jin cannot come back right now"

"And Walt?", she pressed worryingly. 

"The Others took him. I never met him"

…

Shannon’s funeral was a quiet and sad event. The last one was still fresh in their memory, which made their friend’s passing even more devastating. Their failed raft launch also didn’t help to lift the mood, but the fact that their friends from the raft had made it back to them in one piece was a big relief. Well, actually they didn’t all make it back in one piece; Walt had been kidnapped by the others and Sawyer was injured. Nevertheless, Roxy had the weird feeling that both of them will turn out alright in the end, whenever that may be. 

Even the people from the tail section had paid their respects to Shannon after reuniting with the rest of the survivors. It was devastating to know only a few people had been spared by “The Others”, but then again, the survivors had originally thought they were the only ones who had survived the plane crash, which made their reunion with the tail section people bittersweet. Rose was overjoyed to see her husband again, just like Sun, who had thought he was somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 

It was a little awkward with the new people at first. It had been one of them who’d shot Shannon after all, Ana-Lucia was the woman’s name, and that’s not something that’s easy to forgive. Everyone knew it was an accident and Ana-Lucia seemed to be regretting it, but Roxy just couldn’t make herself not try to avoid Ana-Lucia. Not that the woman didn’t do the opposite. While Mr Eko, Libby and Bernard were very quick to socialise, she’d stayed mostly to herself and avoided the rest of the survivors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait and the short chapter. I promise the next one will be longer. And you won't have to wait a week until I post a next update, I promise.  
> Hope you liked this one despite the length. I was kinda going through a writers block when I wrote that and I'm just glad I finished it.   
> But I have exciting news for you! I'll tell you those news by giving you a little spoiler about the next chapter. It may or may not contain the words "crossbow" "net". ;D
> 
> Thank you all for your lovely comments and the kudos. You guys are my motivation~   
> -B.


End file.
